


L6NT6N READINGS 



■l 



ON THG L1F6 OF JACOB 






i urn 



mm 



— — ■ WiWBBUIUUMiMM 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Ckap.~ ____. Copyright No. 

Shelf .: JL-3 u~«3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT 

FORTY BRIEF EXPOSITORY ADDRESSES 

ON THE 

LIFE OF JACOB 

ffor tbe Meefe=S)a£s of Xent 



BY THE 

REV. F. A. d/lAUNT, D.D. 

RECTOR OF ST. DAVID'S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-Third Street 
19OI 



MLibrary of Cotiflfross 

hwu Co^es Received i 
,N 26 1901 

j * Copyright entry 

SECOND COPY 






Copyright, 1901 

BY 

E. P. DUTTON & CO, 



Ube Iknicfcerbocfcet fftress, IRew JtJorfc 



To 
ORLANDO CREASE 



PREFACE. 

NOTHING ages so fast as a sermon. There is a 
steady, if limited, demand for new Lenten Read- 
ings, modern and moderate in tone and at the same time 
loyal to the Scriptures and Creeds of the Church. 

I have tried to make these addresses interesting to a 
week-day congregation. For this, in many instances, 
style, method, and personal preference have been sacri- 
ficed ; something, it may be, of the dignity of a former 
generation; nothing, I trust, of doctrinal soundness or 
of spiritual earnestness and wisdom. The story helps, 
although each address is complete in itself. I have used 
the commentaries, ancient and modern, and several 
monographs on the narrative. 1 Some verses not other- 
wise credited are by Archbishop Alexander. 

During the past fall and winter a number of type- 
written copies of these addresses have been read to Sun- 
day congregations by students in two of our theological 
seminaries and the approval of these young men probably 
has had its influence with my publishers, as it has been 
an encouragement to me, in giving them a more perma- 
nent form. 

I hope that lay-readers may find the book serviceable 

1 Indebtedness is acknowledged to four books by eminent English au- 
thors : Isaac and Jacob, George Rawlinson, M.A. ; The Hebrew Twins, 
Samuel Cox, D.D. ; Israel, A Prince of God, F. B. Meyer, B.A. ; The 
Book of Genesis, Marcus Dods, D.D. For suggestions on the wrestling 
at Peniel I owe thanks for a sermon by each of two distinguished American 
preachers, the Rev. Charles S. Olmsted, D.D., and the Rev. Edwin B. 
Coe, D.D. 



vi Preface. 

for other seasons as well as for Lent. A friend has sug- 
gested that these expositions might be useful in parish 
and Sunday-school libraries. I have only to add that 
instead of finding the Scripture narrative too slight for 
my purpose there has been difficulty in covering the 
ground and that the chapters are specially helpful for 
Lenten study, as may be seen from a glance at the titles 
of the addresses, particularly of those for Holy Week. 

Philadelphia, 

Thanksgiving Day, 1900. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

i. The Beginning ....... i 

2. The Brothers . 7 

3. The Barter 13 

4. The Birthright 19 

5. The Plot 25 

6. The Counter-Plot 31 

7. The Stolen Blessing 37 

8. The Bitter Cry 43 

9. The Anger of Esau ...... 49 

10. The Daughters of Heth 55 

n. The Dream 61 

12. The Ladder 67 

13. The Promise 73 

14. The Awakening -79 

15. The Vow 85 

16. The Altar .91 

17. Serving for Rachel 97 

18. The Return 103 

19. The Pursuit 109 

20. Jacob's Prayer 115 

21. The Mercies of God 121 

22. Two Bands 127 

23. God Wrestling with Jacob .... 133 

24. Peniel 139 

vii 



VII 1 



Contents 



25. The Prince of God 

26. Strange Gods Put away 

27. The Oak of Shechem 

28. Bethel Revisited . 
Three Graves 
The Sale of Joseph 
The Famine-Time . 
The Wagons of Egypt 
The Land of Goshen 

34. The Two Sons of Joseph 

35. Unstable as Water 

36. The Sceptre of Judah 

37. Grieved by the Archers 

38. Thy Salvation 

39. He Yielded up the Ghost 

40. The Cave of Machpelah 



PAGE 

*45 
151 
157 
163 
169 

175 
181 

187 

i93 
199 
205 
211 
217 
223 
229 
2 35 



THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT 



THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT. 



THE BEGINNING. 

ASH WEDNESDAY. 

" His hand took hold on Esau's heel ; and his name was called Jacob.'* 
— Gen. xxv. 26. 

IN the journal of that most human ecclesiastic, Dean 
Swift, we find the following entry: " Lent has come 
again, and I hate Lent. I hate furmity and sour, devout 
faces." And he is quoted as saying: " But I suppose 
that for most of us there is, during the Lenten season, 
a breath of God upon the air, an influence of which we 
cannot wholly rid ourselves, and alas, the inmost reflec- 
tion in our hearts from time to time is that Lent is a 
bore." 

In the twentieth century our Lenten dinners are sel- 
dom limited to the old London dishes of " furmity " or 
" herb porridge," and we have learned that " sour 
faces " are not signs of growth in the Gospel graces of 
faith, hope, and charity. Nevertheless there are many 
who still hate Lent, and more, it may be, whose inmost 
reflection is that " Lent is a bore." There are those to 
whom the holy season, which they observe merely out of 
respect for fashion or custom, means the temporary sus- 
pension of the worldly gaieties upon which their hearts 
are fixed. There are others who hear in the Ash Wed- 



2 The Bartered Birthright. 

nesday church bell the unwelcome voice of conscience ; 
they are reminded of resolutions formed in the months 
gone by that with the coming Lent they would turn over 
a new leaf. The habits, thoughts, negligences, compan- 
ionships, which were sapping the spiritual life would in 
Lent, they had promised themselves, be renounced. 
Now the day is at hand, it will not wait, and the effort 
to break away from the evil thing disquiets them ; they 
groan in spirit as they strive to force the feeble will into 
prompt and resolute action. But it is to be hoped that 
the great majority of those who will keep Lent realize 
that a breath of God is on the air, and welcome the re- 
tirement, the multiplied services, the inspiration of the 
hearty companionship of a multitude throughout the 
world who at this time endeavor to strengthen character 
and purify and sweeten the innermost springs of the 
spiritual life. To many such, however, there is some 
inward dissatisfaction in the thought that there is likely 
to be a tedious reiteration in the themes of the medita- 
tions and exhortations presented at this season. The 
best Lenten books and the best Lenten sermons seem to 
them to follow well-beaten lines. To take up once more 
during the earlier weeks of Lent the temptations and 
the sins of the appetites of the body, and the physical 
sufferings of Christ in the closing weeks, has a sugges- 
tion of triteness rather than of enlivening interest, and 
while they would not venture, perhaps, to speak of the 
discussion of these subjects " as a bore," it does seem 
unattractive, somehow, from its very familiarity, and 
they have a feeling that there is room for other, if not 
more vital, themes. 

For those who have kept many Lents a fresh line of re- 
ligious study may be acceptable. For beginners it may 



The Beginning. 3 

be an encouragement to go on next year to more abstract 
and doctrinal subjects. And so this Lent you are in- 
vited to read with me the struggle which one human soul 
made to be true to himself and to his God — to trace out 
the steps by which Jacob, the Heel-catcher, the Sup- 
planter, became Israel, the Prince of God. 

In connection with these brief, practical, week-day ad- 
dresses upon this most eventful, romantic, chequered, 
and helpful human life, you are earnestly exhorted to 
hear and heed the sermons preached in church on the 
Sundays of Lent. In the time allowed for a sermon 
your rector will have opportunity to bring before you 
the deeper devotional and doctrinal aspects of this por- 
tion of the Christian year in a style and method more be- 
coming to the greater solemnities of public worship on 
the Lord's Day. 

(Should these printed pages be read by any parishioner 
whose clergyman uses some other course of week-day 
readings, that parishioner must not make the private 
reading of this book an excuse for neglecting the week- 
day services of the parish church. Unless these pages 
are an inspiration to increased faithfulness in Christian 
duty they will be written and read in vain.) 

We have said that Jacob's history is interesting. 
Every life-story has its fascination. "Biography," said 
Carlyle, " is the most universally pleasant and profitable 
of all reading." The biography of one who was great 
and good is a help, incentive, and guide for all who 
would be true to God and to the highest ideals of man- 
kind. In every true life, if we get at the secret of it, we 
shall find that strong and beautiful character is wrought 
out and manifested 

" In the struggle, not the prize ; " 



4 The Bartered Birthright. 

and that the refinement of mind, the elevation of thought, 
the tenacity of purpose, the tenderness of affection, the 
strength of will, which result from a life of energetic and 
well-directed effort to serve God and man, are in them- 
selves the best and most satisfactory rewards of that 
labor. A distinguished Scotch preacher (Dr. Candlish) 
said: " There is scarcely a mood of the mind into which 
sin or sorrow can cast a believer that may not find a type, 
or parallel, or example, in Jacob." His words are true. 
The narrative is of perennial interest. It is, moreover, 
especially suitable for Lenten reading. In Lent we hope 
to overcome some of our faults, to multiply our graces. 
Jacob trod that upward road and marked the way. No 
man in the Bible, unless it be St. Peter, started lower or 
climbed higher. It is also to be noted that while Jacob 
was born with the strongest inclinations towards evil, 
while he often yielded to those inclinations, he was never 
lured into the grosser forms of self-indulgence. His sins 
were of the heart and of the mind. Therefore, if Jacob 
speaks to believers by his sorrows, by his chastisements, 
by his aspirations, he speaks especially by his sins, for 
few of us are in danger of yielding to the coarser forms 
of vice ; our sins, for the most part, are the sins of Jacob 
— sins of worldliness, of self-will, of presuming on the 
mercies of God. 

The series of addresses which we have outlined will 
be chiefly expository. Now expositions of Holy Scrip- 
ture are attractive to thoughtful people because they 
necessarily eliminate many of the undesirable features 
of modern religious discourse. The personality of the 
speaker, local, secular, or disputed subjects must retire 
into the background while the Holy Spirit Himself, in 
the words which He has inspired, is permitted to speak 



The Beginning. 5 

His own blessed and edifying message. It is generally- 
agreed that our lay-people should take more time in 
Lent for an intelligent and prayerful study of some por- 
tion of the sacred writings. We hear much of the dangers 
which threaten the Church from the researches and 
conjectures of the so-called " higher critics." As a 
matter of fact, the deadliest foe which threatens the Word 
of God to-day is not criticism, but neglect. It is the un- 
opened Bible in Christian homes, not criticism, even the 
most radical and faithless criticism, which should awaken 
our fears. God will defend and keep His own. But its 
treasures are for those that seek them. Expository 
preaching is a reading of Scripture in the ears of the 
people, and it often leads them to open their Bibles when 
they reach home. It is, furthermore, the natural method 
of enforcing Divine truth. The chief purpose of preach- 
ing is to interpret Holy Scripture. Our Lord's first ser- 
mon was an exposition of a chapter from Isaiah, and on 
the day of His Resurrection 4< He expounded unto " the 
two disciples, on the way to Emmaus, " in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning Himself." This method 
was used in the synagogues and was transferred to the 
early Church. Justin Martyr tells us that in the second 
century all preaching was expository. In the fourth cen- 
tury St. Chrysostom chided the people because they 
turned their eyes to a man who lighted lamps in the 
cathedral while he was expounding the Scriptures. Ex- 
position is not the only way, nor the only good way 
of preaching the Gospel, but surely it should not be 
neglected. When this method is fairly employed the 
pews usually find relief in one particular, for it is with 
an isolated text and not with an exposition that the 
preacher finds it so " dangerously easy to glide into 



6 The Bartered Birthright. 

exhortation when he should be rather exercising himself 
in explanation." 

On this day of good resolutions let us think of one 
great fact in Jacob's history. When God chose Jacob to 
found a nation and institute a religious economy, He 
did not " find out a man with a ready-made virtue, and 
then reward him for it." On the contrary, he who 
deceived his father, cheated his brother, mastered des- 
tiny itself, and " from a shelf the precious diadem stole 
and put it in his pocket," who vowed " the Lord 
shall be my God," and yet let his heart linger on the 
earth — such a man as this found it hard to learn to sub- 
mit his will to the will of God. That was the secret 
of all Jacob's failures and sorrows. Is it not so with us ? 
Said St. Augustine : " The carnal man rises from his 
worldliness and becomes divine when in all things he 
prefers God's will to his own." To-day let us resolve to 
make a complete surrender and say from the heart, " Thy 
will, not mine, be done." " I have but one small 
thing — my will," writes a holy man. "Is it a great 
thing to surrender to Him who gives such great bless- 
ings to me, and who purchased me with His own most 
precious Blood ? " 



THE BROTHERS. 

FIRST THURSDAY IN LENT. 

"And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the 
field ; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved 
Esau, because he did eat of his venison : but Rebekah loved Jacob." — 
Gen. xxv. 27, 28. 

IS the narrative before us a true story ? Is it history or 
is it merely folk-lore and old-world legend ? Of many 
answers take one. In this portion of the Bible we read 
of little or nothing which is beyond our own experience. 
Birth, dreams, thoughts about God, marriage, joy, sor- 
row, doubt, death, burial are among the facts, and not 
the legends of the race. The characters in the story are 
not grotesque nor superhuman, neither entirely good nor 
utterly bad ; and the scenes and incidents brought before 
us are in keeping with the civilization of the period desig- 
nated. We must admit that these chapters, in their 
record of the feelings, speech, and behavior of the men 
and women whose history they relate, seem to give us a 
natural and credible story ; that at the same time their 
representation of the being and character of God is such 
that neither the intellect nor the moral sense is repelled 
by what is said concerning Him. 

That portion of the history which we will consider 
during the days of Lent opens with the birth of Esau and 
Jacob. Subsequently, each received a new name to 
which a moral significance was attached, but when they 
were born the twins were given names suggested by the 

7 



8 The Bartered Birthright. 

act of one and the appearance of the other, Esau mean- 
ing " hairy " and Jacob " he who takes by the heel." 

As a rule twins cherish a deep affection for each other 
and have similar tastes and dispositions, but the sons of 
Isaac and Rebekah soon exhibited as marked a contrast 
in head and heart as in outward appearance. From dawn 
to dusk Esau roamed over the hills and valleys in pursuit 
of the wild beasts of the field. He was the heir and 
thought himself entitled to a youth of pleasure. But 
Jacob, accepting the position of a younger son, gave his 
attention to the flocks and herds, the sowing and the 
reaping, and became a man of steady, industrious habits. 
Rebekah loved Jacob and knew that he was God's chosen, 
for an oracle from heaven had declared unto her, " The 
elder shall serve the younger." But Jacob was by nature 
crafty and ambitious, and unfortunately his mother, in- 
stead of correcting this disposition, stimulated it by fre- 
quently reminding him of the mysterious message from 
heaven. And so he grew up with high notions of the 
powers and privileges of the birthright of the family, firm 
in the belief that somehow he would be the future lord 
of the tribe and the inheritor of the promises, and ready 
to aid himself by any means within reach in the work of 
securing his rights and accomplishing the designs of 
Providence. 

Jacob differed from Esau in at least three particulars. 
Jacob is the first man mentioned in the Bible who pos- 
sessed marked intellectual strength ; upon whom the gift 
of thought and expression was bestowed with a generos- 
ity which would have made him a distinguished man in 
any calling, in any age. He used that power to master 
men, and he mastered them. For many years he matched 
his keen mind against the mind of God and sought to 



The Brothers. 9 

have his own way and win his own ends by outwitting 
his Maker. Now a strong man, a man who stands as a 
mountain peak amid surrounding hills, is always an inter- 
esting and fascinating study, for naturally we are all hero- 
worshippers. Furthermore, Heine's observation that the 
men of action are after all only the unconscious instru- 
ments of the men of thought is as profound as it is true. 
Brains rule the world. But the spiritual helpfulness of 
the story of Jacoc'~ mental power is to be seen in the fact 
that while he was constantly tempted to use, and often 
did use, his intellect in the service of the senses — not 
grossly, for he was quite free from grossness in any of its 
forms — God constantly withstood him in the attempt. 
From first to last God wrestled with Jacob, for having 
begun a good work in the soul of His servant He would 
accomplish it unto the day of salvation. 

There are two other qualities which also distinguished 
Jacob from his brother. 

One was a high appreciation of the spiritual value of the 
birthright. He had the religious temperament. From 
earliest childhood he thought much of the mysteries of 
the strange world about him, of the stranger world within 
him. " Has the world an owner? " he would ask ; " does 
it belong to my father Isaac? What makes the world go 
on, the sun rise and set, the seasons come and go ? And 
the people, too, are they governed by laws, as the world 
seems to be ? What of myself ; must I leave this world ; 
when, and whither?" And so as the sense of his own 
personality awakes he will think of the real Owner, Law- 
maker, and Governor of the world and of all its people. 
He will become conscious of a Presence outside himself, 
a Personality spoken of by his devout parents as God. 
Thoughtful youth readily attains to such convictions. It 



io The Bartered Birthright. 

sees that every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. 
If the body thirsts for water, its demand is amply provided 
for. If the heart craves affection, there are fellow-beings 
to receive and to return its devotion. If we thirst for 
life eternal, for love eternal, it is therefore reasonable to 
suppose that eternal life and eternal love will be given in 
answer to the cry for them. Yes, the human heart is 
naturally religious, naturally Christian. It is not satisfied 
with the earth. You give a bird food and drink and a 
safe and comfortable cage. You may think it satisfied 
with its life in the cage. Open the door, however, and 
you will see where its true home is when it soars forth 
into its native air. Unthoughtful Esau was seemingly 
content with the earth. Jacob longed to know God. 

Again, Jacob was distinguished from his brother by his 
constancy, his persistent, unwavering constancy. Esau 
is "to one thing constant never." He acts upon im- 
pulse, and appetite or circumstances change his pur- 
pose from day to day. Inconstancy is " that one error " 
which " fills him with faults; makes him run through 
all the sins." Notwithstanding his guile, Jacob was 
great because he was constant. His mind was set 
on the birthright and year after year he schemed and 
watched, and, never wavering, won the prize. Rachel 
was the darling of his heart. For her he toiled in almost 
servile labor fourteen years and because of his great love 
the time seemed short. The constancy of Thackeray's 
Major Dobbin, over which we thrill and weep, is in Jacob. 
Rachel died by Jacob's side in her youth, but her image 
remained undimmed in his constant heart, and after what 
might be called a lifetime, when death came to him in 
the mansion of the great king of Egypt, his thoughts were 
of Rachel and her name was on his lips. Addison's 



The Brothers. n 

strong words concerning constancy will help us to recog- 
nize in Jacob's remarkable constancy a true greatness. 
' Without constancy/' says the essayist, " there is neither 
love, friendship, nor virtue in the world." 

In the Scripture before us there is a lesson for the 
young and for those who love them. Whittier has voiced 
this lesson, — 

" We shape ourselves the joy or fear 

Of which the coming life is made ; 
And fill our future's atmosphere 

With sunshine or with shade. 
The tissue of the life to be 

We weave with colors all our own ; 
And in the fields of destiny 

We reap as we have sown." 

Or, more briefly, in Wordsworth's familiar line, 

" The child is father of the man." 

We have here also a lesson for our own home life. 
Isaac's home was undoubtedly the holiest and purest on 
the earth at that time. The Marriage Office holds it up 
as a model even for Christians, reminding us that Isaac 
and Rebekah lived faithfully together, — and yet there 
was discord in that home. There was in that home both 
want of thought and want of heart. In that home Esau 
became a profane man. Are we doing God service in our 
homes ? If we desire to do better and be better, here is 
work for Lent. We read that on the night of the Pass- 
over in Egypt " there was not a house where there was not 
one dead." In how many of our houses is there one dead 
in trespasses and sins ? Do those I live with take know- 
ledge of me that I have been with Jesus ? Do they see 



12 The Bartered Birthright. 

that my communions are making me more gentle and 
unselfish in act and speech ? " Let them learn first to 
shew piety at home " is a text for us all to ponder in our 
hearts. 



THE BARTER. 

FIRST FRIDAY IN LENT. 

"And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red 
pottage ; for I am faint." — Gen. xxv. 30. 

THE portion of Jacob's life-story which will occupy 
our thoughts for some days to come is, in one of 
its aspects, a study in temptation. To each member of 
this household, the chosen family of God, the tempter 
comes. Next Sunday morning the Gospel in the Com- 
munion Office relates the temptation of Christ. That 
important event in His life naturally leads us to think of 
our own temptations and His example to us in our trials. 
His succor and His sympathy. During these early days 
in Lent we are therefore following the mind of the Church 
in taking up the subject of temptation. 

1. Consider first the peculiar incident of the text. We 
read that " Jacob sod pottage; and Esau came from 
the field and he was faint." Jacob was preparing his 
evening meal, a dish of pottage or porridge, composed of 
red lentils, a vegetable still in common use in the East. 
The savory odor of the pottage cooking on the fire guided 
Esau to the spot. He was coming home wearied from 
the hunt. We know not what unusual fatigues he had 
endured that day, or what daring adventures he had en- 
countered with the wild beasts of the field, but when he 
reached his brother's side he threw himself down and de- 
manded the instant satisfaction of his ravenous appetite, 
crying out, " Feed me with that red — that red." 

13 



14 The Bartered Birthright. 

Jacob saw the hand of fate. For years he had been 
plotting and planning to secure his brother's birthright, 
and although it is scarcely possible that he had ever 
dreamed of such a chance as this, his keen mind at once 
recognized the opportunity. He knew his brother; he 
knew how slight a value Esau placed upon the spiritual 
heritage, and he knew the strength of Esau's appetites 
and impulses; and so, seizing the opportunity, he replied, 
" ' Sell me this day thy birthright.' On this condition 
only you shall have the pottage.' ;< Behold," said the 
hungry man, " I am at the point to die; and what profit 
shall this birthright do to me ? " Here we have the lan- 
guage of exaggeration and unbelief. He was not starving 
or dying, he had strength to walk and speak, and in his 
father's house near by, or from the hand of any servant, 
he might in a few moments have had enough and to spare. 
And when he declared that his birthright could profit him 
nothing after he was dead he revealed his own want of 
faith in what was really the very heart of the Abrahamic 
promise. Esau is thus an idolater of the immediate, the 
real founder of the Epicurean school — " Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die." His birthright is a vague 
vision of the future, while the pottage is a " bird in hand 
worth two in the bush." 

But Jacob will not trust his brother's word : " Swear to 
me this day," he says ; " we will make a bargain which 
cannot be broken. ' ' Thereupon the agreement was sealed 
with an oath. " So Esau sold his birthright unto Jacob." 
' Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils. 
And he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his 
way: thus Esau despised his birthright." 

2. What, then, let us now ask, was this birthright, and 
was Jacob justified in securing it as he did ? In patri- 



The Barter. 15 

archal times the first-born succeeded his father as head 
of the family, inherited a double portion of his father's 
goods, and had the right to act as priest for the family 
and tribe. But the promise to Abraham declared, " In 
thee, and in thy seed, shall all the families of the earth 
be blessed," and therefore the birthright in the chosen 
family constituted its possessor the father, after the flesh, 
of the Messiah who was to come. From him should de- 
scend " the chief ruler/' Christ, who should be " the first- 
born among many brethren," and " the first-begotten 
from the dead " and whose Church is called " the Church 
of the first-born." 

Now Jacob believed this, believed, too,, the revelation 
made to his mother, " the elder shall serve the younger," 
and he coveted the blessing. The narrative nowhere 
represents Jacob as a perfect man, and here we see him 
committing a sin which led him into other sins and em- 
bittered his whole life. We are, of course, disposed to 
view his conduct in the most favorable light possible. 
But we must frankly admit that he treated his brother 
unfairly and took advantage of his weakness. We must 
remember, however, that Jacob had neither the written 
Word, the Holy Spirit, nor the example of Christ, as we 
have ; nevertheless he had a conscience and he must have 
known that this barter was wrong and faithless. 

3. Take a third thought. Let us consider Esau's temp- 
tation and his fall. Esau was suddenly tempted to pay 
too dear a price for the gratification of an appetite of the 
body. So the tempter said to our Lord, " If thou be 
the Son of God, command that these stones be made 
bread." Our Saviour's real temptation in the suggestion 
here offered was that He should do His own will and 
make Himself independent of the Father's providential 



1 6 The Bartered Birthright. 

support. Yet He had fasted long and was an hungered, 
and we know that He was tempted in all points like as 
we are, and surely, in some measure, He was tempted to 
pay too dear for bread to eat. Are we not all familiar, 
sorrowfully familiar, with this form of temptation ? The 
natural desires of the body are sinless in themselves, for 
they were implanted by God, but the tempter comes and 
lures us to gratify these desires unlawfully, prematurely, 
instantly, and the price he asks is our birthright. 

To-day let us take home two thoughts which grow out 
of what has been said upon the subject of temptation. 

Those who are endeavoring to be consistent communi- 
cants of the Church and to grow in grace soon discover 
the two chief forms of temptation which beset them and 
the Christian method of dealing with such temptations. 
The first general form of temptation may be called a trial 
of faith. St. Peter in the first chapter of his first Epistle 
teaches us that we should " rejoice " under such " mani- 
fold temptations, that the trial of" our " faith, being 
much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though 
it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and 
honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." 
The manifold temptations which are a trial of faith, the 
Apostle seems to say, must boldly be met and conquered 
by the help of God. He also tells us for our encourage- 
ment, that they are only " for a season," you will soon 
find relief; nor do they come to you without purpose, 
needlessly, for you are assaulted by them only " if need 
be." The storm of wind is good for the oak because it 
lengthens and strengthens the roots of the oak, making it 
more vigorous and able to withstand yet fiercer gales. 
So temptation met and overcome by the Christian in- 
creases his strength. The strength of the temptation, in 



The Barter. 17 

a real and true sense, has been added to the strength of 
the conqueror, has passed over into the soul of the victor. 
In fighting manfully to maintain our Christian name and 
calling it is our comfort to know that our Divine Helper 
is ever with us, offering us grace to continue the conflict. 
1 Where wert Thou, Lord, while I was being tempted," 
exclaimed a saint of old. " Close by you, my son, all 
the while," was the tender reply. With all his mistakes, 
Mohammed was strong because of his unwavering faith 
in God as an ever-present help. When his trembling 
comrade cried in despair, " We are only two," he could 
confidently reply, " There is one other, there is God." 
Fenelon, the devout Christian believer, said, " The reali- 
zation of God's presence is the one sovereign remedy 
against temptation." 

Again, while some temptations must be faced and 
beaten down, there are temptations of another sort, 
temptations such as Esau's, temptations which must be 
fled from. Joseph fled and was saved. " Watch and 
pray, that ye enter not into temptation." Our Lord 
would have us turn away from the entrance of the 
tempter's palace of false delight. Especially should we 
flee from a temptation which lures us to yield to our 
besetting sin. As has been said, " If a man wears gar- 
ments in which powder is wrought into the texture, he 
cannot safely go and hire out in a blacksmith's shop." 

In Holy Scripture we are taught that Christians are 
not ignorant of the devices of the adversary of souls. 
Usually we do know whether a temptation is one which 
should be fought or fled from. If it is one we should flee 
from, we are lost if we dally with it. A prompt, resolute, 
courageous turning away is wisdom and safety. But how 
shall we have strength to act thus decisively and on the 



1 8 The Bartered Birthright. 

instant ? Take one answer. Close your eyes and think 
of Christ upon the Cross. Then shall you have strength 
to turn away. For "God is faithful." He "will not 
suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able ; but will 
with the temptation also make a way to escape." 



THE BIRTHRIGHT. 

FIRST SATURDAY IN LENT. 

" Thus Esau despised his birthright." — Gen. xxv., 34. 

ESAU sold his birthright because he despised it. His 
appetite was stronger than his faith. For this rea- 
son he is called in the Epistle to the Hebrews a " profane 
person." Self-indulgence and unbelief go together, and 
one leads to the other; and the motives which prompted 
Esau to make this senseless, wicked bargain are still do- 
ing their evil work in the world. 

I. Birthrights are sold every day " for one morsel of 
meat." Esau is the type of thousands who barter away 
baptismal grace for some desire of the flesh. To make 
this foolish exchange is a temptation which beguiles the 
young especially. Youth should be guarded with all 
diligence because the penalty visited upon such barter is 
always severe, sometimes it seems terribly, even unjustly 
severe. On every hand may be found those who suffer 
through the years on account of one moment of lack of 
self-control in the days of youth. Yet when we consider, 
we are forced to admit that in the nature of things such 
consequences are inevitable. The first bloom of purity 
and innocence, for instance, is a birthright which once 
lost is lost forever. Brush the bloom from the peach or 
the plum, and the peach remains and the plum remains, 
but the bloom is gone forever. It -never comes a second 
time. It is so with the soul. The consequences of some 
sins remain. Some things once lost are lost forever. 

19 



20 The Bartered Birthright. 

And so the wise man's exhortation, " Keep thy heart with 
all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life," should be 
impressed upon the young. The heart is the source and 
centre of the life of the body. When it is diseased, the 
life falters ; when it ceases, death ensues. In the spiritual 
use of the word the heart signifies that which is precious 
and necessary to the on-flowing of life. Therefore the 
heart must be kept with all diligence. The birthright of 
a pure, clean heart, a heart open to the influences of 
Divine grace, Satan covets and offers for it " one morsel 
of meat." And still the foolish bargain allures, seems a 
good bargain to the eager appetite. To all, some time, 
in some way, the adversary draws nigh, as he came to 
hungry Esau, as he came to the fasting Christ, saying, 
" All this indulgence, all this earthly pleasure or treasure 
will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down but for a moment 
and worship me." 

2. Notice, too, that Esau's sin, like most acts of a 
similar character, was at once the impulse of the moment 
and the result of tendencies which had long been growing 
in him. A flash of lightning seems a sudden thing. In 
reality the lightning flash is only made possible by atmo- 
spheric conditions and stores of electricity which have 
been gathering for some time. This helps to explain 
why an entire earthly career, possibly an eternal future, 
may turn upon the act of a moment. Criminals in our 
State prisons often tell those to whom they open their 
hearts that they were surprised into crime ; almost before 
they knew it the guilty deed was done. If they had been 
given time for reflection, they say, they would have over- 
come the impulse which ruined them. But in all such 
cases evil desires and tempers must have been nourished 
in the heart for months and years ; when they were full 



The Birthright. 21 

grown some unexpected chance slipped the leash on them 
and they passed beyond control. When we yield to a 
sinful impulse, behind that act of the moment, there is, 
we may be sure, a history. Character has been defined 
as the sum of all our acts; and what any one of us would 
do in any sudden storm of passion, in any instantaneous 
and deadly peril, would probably depend upon our char- 
acter — upon what we already are. Esau's past thoughts 
and acts had made him the man he was. His present 
behavior was only the harvest of what he had sown in 
the waiting furrows of the past. 

3. Again, Esau was not a profane man because he sold 
his birthright, but he sold his birthright because he was 
a profane man. He is here the representative of many a 
man who was baptized in infancy, grew up in a Christian 
home, and from early childhood was made familiar with 
churchly teaching, who notwithstanding this precious 
birthright has become a man of the world ; a frank, strong, 
generous, attractive man, it may be, but yet a man of the 
world; a man who receives and accepts God's most 
coveted gifts while he neglects and forgets the Giver. 
We hesitate to call such cultivated, successful, and pleas- 
ant men profane. If they seem to lead moral lives and 
speak respectfully of religion, we hope for the best. But 
if we look closely into such lives we shall see that both 
towards God and men they are selfish. A man of this 
kind often smilingly requires his family and his friends 
to bend to his will and minister to his comfort, his 
pleasure, or his pride. To do his will is the price of his 
esteem. Even his unselfish deeds are acts of expiation 
into which he is shamed by the love of others, or his self- 
love is gratified by placing others in his debt. To real 
self-denial he is a stranger. The very first lesson in 



22 The Bartered Birthright. 

Christianity he knows not ; and he has it not in him to 
desire to be like Christ, — who did not His own will, but 
gave Himself for others. It is a pitiful thing to see these 
strong, generous, attractive, prosperous men who are 
without God in the world. How we shrink from warn- 
ing such men ! Is it never a duty, your duty and mine, 
at some God-given opportunity, to tell such men, face to 
face, honestly and frankly, of their awful danger ? 

4. Again, Esau was profane because he did not believe 
in his birthright. He thought it would not profit him 
then or after he died. There are many to-day in the 
same unbelief. They do not see the value or necessity of 
religion either for this life or for that which possibly may 
follow. Such unbelief is a great sin because it shows that 
the man has no inward sense of a guilt which needs par- 
don, no ideals which can uplift. Surely, too, neglect of 
God, neglect of His choicest gifts, must wound the heart 
of a loving Father. Such sin is a grieving of the Spirit 
of God. From those who so sin we may ask a hearing, 
if not for ourselves, yet for one who was great and wise 
and not disposed to be credulous. James Russell Lowell, 
in an after-dinner speech before a company of educated 
and prosperous men, many of whom were faithless, said : 

I fear that when we indulge ourselves in the amusement 
of going without a religion, we are not, perhaps, aware 
how much we are sustained at present by an enormous 
mass, all about us, of religious feeling and religious con- 
viction ; so that, whatever it may be safe for us to think, 
for us who have had great advantages, and have been 
brought up in such a way that a certain moral direction 
has been given to our character, I do not know what 
would become of the less favored classes of mankind if 
they undertook to play the same game. Whatever 



The Birthright. 23 

defects and imperfections may attach to a few points of a 
doctrinal system which proclaims a crucified and risen 
Christ, it is infinitely preferable to any form of polite and 
polished skepticism which gathers as its votaries the de- 
generate sons of heroic ancestors, who having been trained 
in a society and educated in schools, the foundations of 
which were laid by men of faith and piety, now turn and 
kick down the ladder by which they have climbed up, 
and persuade men to live without God, and leave them 
to die without hope. 'The worst kind of religion is no 
religion at all, but these men living in ease and luxury, 
indulging themselves in the amusement of going without 
a religion, may be thankful that they live in lands where 
the Gospel which they neglect has tamed the beastliness 
and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might 
long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea 
Islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned their hides 
like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the 
microscopic search of skepticism which has hunted the 
heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence 
of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, 
and has found a place on this planet ten miles square, 
where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and 
security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled 
and unpolluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy 
respected, manhood respected, and womanhood honored, 
and human life held in due regard ; when skeptics can 
find such a place ten miles square on this globe where the 
Gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and 
laid the foundations and made decency and security pos- 
sible, it will then be in order for skeptical literati to re- 
move thither and there ventilate their views. But so 
long as these very men are dependent upon the religion 



24 The Bartered Birthright. 

which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they 
may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the 
Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that 
Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of life 
eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible, 
and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom." 



THE PLOT. 

MONDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, 
so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son." — Gen. xxvii. I. 

TO-DAY we reach the story of Isaac's temptation and 
his fall. 
Is it a sin to be tempted ? No, for yesterday's Gospel 
told us that our Lord Himself was tempted — tempted in 
all points like as we are and yet without sin. He was 
without sin in being tempted and He was without sin 
under temptation ; for He yielded not to the enticement. 
We also know from our own experience that temptation 
rejected is often turned into a blessing. A rejected 
temptation becomes a blessing when it reveals to us our 
own weakness and at the same time turns weakness into 
strength, as it is written, " Blessed is the man that en- 
dureth temptation." In the present instance, however, 
Isaac failed to win such blessedness. He yielded to the 
evil suggestion without the slightest resistance. He even 
tempted himself. He was a holy man, given to medita- 
tion and prayer, a beautiful example of the contemplative 
life, one whose days were knit each to each by natural 
piety, with scarce a trace of worldliness or self-will, and 
yet he sinned the one great sin of his life because he de- 
termined to have his own way, disregarding the known 
will of God. That so good a man fell so grievously and 
inexcusably seems strange at first reading and is a strik- 
ing illustration of the power of sin and of the danger 

25 



26 The Bartered Birthright. 

which ever shadows the believer, shadows even the oldest 
and most loyal believer. And now let us take up the 
interesting narrative. 

i. One day Isaac decided to make his will; his failing 
sight and bodily weakness forcing upon him the conclu- 
sion that death was near. " Behold, now," he said, " I 
am old ; I know not the day of my death." Notice that 
Isaac manifests no fear of death. There are many such 
men. On the other hand, there are many who cannot 
think of their last earthly moments without singular fore- 
bodings. Charles Lamb was a good man, and yet he 
said, " I would rather set up my tabernacle here; a new 
state of being staggers me." Another good man, a good 
Churchman too, Dr. Samuel Johnson, said, " Death is a 
terrible thing to face. I am horribly afraid." Un- 
doubtedly men of a certain temperament are naturally 
open to the attacks of this fear; it is constitutional. 
More than one of us can say, " This terror have I suffered 
from my youth with a troubled mind ; every day of my 
life has this dark shadow flitted across my soul." Those 
of us who are greatly disquieted by this dread must have 
faith that God will help us to meet death, must never 
permit ourselves to believe that these feelings are signs 
that we are not living in a state of grace or that God has 
not accepted and forgiven us. Our blessed Lord experi- 
enced the same fear and the biographies of the saints 
tell us that the best of Christians have trembled when 
entering the valley of the Shadow of Death. With en- 
tire fearlessness Isaac proceeds to set his house in order. 
He will formally recognize the heir of the birthright and 
dispose of his earthly goods. In the Office for the Visi- 
tation of the Sick there is a rubric which declares that if 
the sick man " hath not already disposed of his goods, 



The Plot. 27 

let him then be admonished to make his will. . . . 
But men should often be put in remembrance to take 
order for the settling of their temporal estates whilst they 
are in health." It is not said, you will observe, that only 
those who have large fortunes are to be thus exhorted ; 
no, the duty rests upon all who have anything to leave 
behind. Make your will, then, if you have not made 
one, and do so at once. If your lawyer tells you you are 
set upon making a foolish or a wicked will he probably 
speaks the truth ; for lawyers, after all, are usually truth- 
ful and conscientious men. And be sure to leave some- 
thing to the Church. Even one hundred dollars would 
yield for all time a useful income to your parish or to the 
blessed work of missions. 

2. Now, what were the terms of Isaac's will ? " And 
it came to pass that when Isaac was old, and his eyes 
were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his 
eldest son, and said unto him, My son : and he said 
unto him, Behold, here am I. And he said, Behold 
now, I am old, I know not the day of my death : Now 
therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and 
thy bow, and go out into the field, and take me some 
venison; And make me savory meat, such as I love, 
and bring it to me, that I may eat ; that my soul may 
bless thee before I die." 

Isaac has determined to hand over to profane Esau the 
great promise of the Covenant. He could have enter- 
tained no doubt that Jacob was the Divinely chosen heir 
of the blessing. Esau had sold his birthright for a mess 
of pottage. In many other ways he had shown that he 
placed no value upon a spiritual inheritance. He had 
married two heathen women of the Hittites ; and Isaac 
knew that the Covenant promise could not descend 



28 The Bartered Birthright. 

upon the sons of these aliens. By his marriage alone 
Esau had forfeited the primogeniture. Furthermore, the 
revelation from heaven was couched in unmistakable 
terms: "The elder shall serve the younger." Isaac 
knew that his purpose was wrong ; we can read his guilt 
in his conduct. In the first place he acts with unseemly 
haste — " he is seized with a panic lest his favorite should 
somehow be left unblest. " In the second place he pro- 
poses to bless Esau secretly. He knows that his family 
and dependants would expect such a ceremony to be per- 
formed at a public feast, the heir arrayed in the " goodly 
raiment " of the priestly office, his chieftainship officially 
recognized, and the whole proceeding hallowed by solemn 
religious rites. Instead of these open and becoming for- 
malities it is now arranged between father and son that 
Esau shall assume his heirship by stealth. In the third 
place we notice that the old man does not, after all, im- 
part the blessing on the instant; he cannot screw his 
courage to the sticking point; he feels that he must 
" stimulate his spirit by artificial means; the prophetic 
ecstasy is not upon him/' The narrative also implies 
that Isaac was accustomed to indulge himself in the 
pleasures of the table, and knowing from past experience 
that the exhilaration which comes from the free use of 
meat and wine would give him strength to carry out a 
wilful purpose, he tells Esau what he means to do and 
sends him out to hunt and cook the savory venison which 
he loves. 

3. The consequences of Isaac's sin were immediate and 
disastrous. He brought rebuke and defeat and humilia- 
tion upon himself; and he led each one of the members 
of his family into sin. 

It must be so. When a believing soul deliberately 



The Plot. 29 

goes against the known will of God retribution must 
come and must be heavy. Are none of us praying, 
' Thy will be done," and at the same time copying 
Isaac's conduct ? You remember how God taught St. 
Peter that the Kingdom of Heaven was open to all be- 
lievers and not to the Jews only. The Apostle saw in a 
vision a great sheet let down before him full of all sorts 
of animals, clean and unclean, and heard a heavenly voice 
commanding him to arise and slay and eat. But the im- 
pulsive Peter refused to break the letter of the Jewish 
Law and instantly replied, " Not so, Lord! " So Isaac 
said, " Not so, Lord! I will not bless Jacob! " So we 
often say, f< Not so, Lord! " And to this disobedience 
all the forlorn experiences of Christians can be traced. 
Every departure from God's way has in it a sting that 
we may be turned back into the right road. No doubt 
Shakespeare recalls boyish memories and experiences 
when he makes Petruchio ask: 

" Who does not know 
Where a wasp doth wear his sting ? " 

By bitter experience we too have learned where the 
wasps of sin do wear their sting. We have been chas- 
tened for our disobedience. Our Heavenly Father has 
often used His rod in order to teach us the lesson of trust 
in His goodness and wisdom. Thus our only safe course 
is to go to God constantly, to seek the Divine guidance in 
all things, both great and small, yielding ourselves heart- 
ily to His will, and never saying, " Not so, Lord." Such 
trustful obedience is the secret of a happy and useful 
Christian life. Fenelon has wisely said: " We sleep in 
peace in the arms of God when we yield ourselves up to 
His providence in a delightful consciousness of His tender 



30 The Bartered Birthright. 

mercies; no more restless uncertainties, no more anxious 
desires, no more impatience at the place we are in, for it 
is God who has put us there, and who holds us in His 
arms. Can we be unsafe where He has placed us, and 
where He watches over us as a parent watches a child ? 
This confiding repose, in which earthly care sleeps, is the 
true vigilance of the heart; yielding itself up to God, 
with no other support than Him, it thus watches while 
we sleep." 



THE COUNTER-PLOT. 

TUESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 
" And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son." — Gen. xxvii. 5. 

" "\ 11 TOMEN will be listening," says an old commen- 
V V tator who excuses Isaac and blames Rebekah. 
In fact she is usually charged with being at the bottom 
of all the mischief recorded in this chapter; whereas the 
narrative itself points to Isaac as the prime mover in 
the sin. He it was who led his wife and children into 
the paths of evil. This does not excuse them, although 
it explains and accounts for their conduct. 

The wilful old man set his own will against the will of 
God and determined to give to Esau the blessing of the 
Covenant. We read, " Now Rebekah heard when Isaac 
spake to Esau." Probably she was listening behind the 
door, although it is not expressly so stated ; and when 
Esau hastened out for the hunt she suddenly realized 
that the knowledge of this guilty secret placed her in a 
most trying and desperate situation. Now we can hardly 
imagine, for any woman, a more pathetic and tragic diffi- 
culty. Her husband is on the point of committing a ter- 
rible sin — a sin which will destroy the chief hope and 
ambition of her own life and defeat the purpose of 
Almighty God. Before sunset the promise of the Cove- 
nant will be bestowed upon profane Esau and the sons of 
his heathen wives. What shall she do ? Shall she go in 
and plead with the obstinate old man ; or run after the 
selfish young man with warnings and supplications? No ; 

31 



32 The Bartered Birthright. 

for they would reply that she sought only her own way 
and the welfare of her beloved Jacob. 

Then the tempter came, saying to her, "Are not your 
own well-known ingenuity and finesse equal to this emer- 
gency? Can you not devise some innocent and justifiable 
artifice in order to check this iniquity ? " And so the out- 
lines of the plot flashed upon her — the counter-plot to 
the plot of Isaac and Esau. She saw her way clear to 
beat them at their own game. Had she no thought of 
the consequences ; no prudent recollection of the truth — 

' ' O what a tangled web we weave, 
When first we practice to deceive ! " 

Did no good angel whisper, " Stand still and see the sal- 
vation of God. Leave the issue with God ; He will bring 
it to pass and accomplish His own purpose in His own 
way ? " Closing her ears to such holy suggestions Rebekah 
persuaded herself that the end justified the means. And 
so the pious fraud began. At once she seeks Jacob, dis- 
closes her plan and asks his help: " Behold, I heard thy 
father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me 
venison, and make me savory meat, that I may eat, and 
bless thee before the Lord, before my death. Now, 
therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that 
which I command thee." Although Jacob was no longer 
a child but a man of middle age, at least fifty-seven — ac- 
cording to some authorities, seventy-seven — Rebekah 
lays upon him a mother's commands. The wily woman 
knows her influence over him and his deep love for her; 
and while she trusts to his own self-interest to help win 
him over to her stratagem, she appeals only to his filial 
feelings. " Go now to the flock and fetch me from 
thence two kids of the goats; and I will make them 



The Counter-Plot. 33 

savory meat for thy father, such as he loveth ; and thou 
shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he 
may bless thee before his death." 

But Jacob has a scruple of conscience at this trickery. 
He already knows the meaning of remorse for sin; and 
if he has not defined it as " the echo of a lost virtue," he 
at least anticipates the feelings which the great poet has 
described in simple and deep words : 

" I am afraid to think what I have done." 

" I fear," said Jacob, " that I shall bring a curse upon 
me and not a blessing." Rebekah, however, assured that 
she is about to win a benediction and not a malediction 
— in her impulsive and unselfish affection for the darling 
of her heart — and impatient with his hesitancy, boldly 
takes upon herself the moral responsibility, crying out, 

Upon me be thy curse, my son; only obey my voice." 
And Jacob obeyed. Then Rebekah " put the skins of 
the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his 
neck. And she gave the savory meat and the bread, 
which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob." 

Look for a moment at the first of the two motives 
which led Rebekah into this wickedness. It was her 
love for Jacob. As Robertson of Brighton truly says, 
" Rebekah desired nothing for herself, but for Jacob; 
for him spiritual blessing, at all events temporal distinc- 
tion; doing wrong not for her own advantage but for the 
sake of one she loved. It is a touch of womanhood. 
There are persons who would romantically admire this 
devotion of Rebekah and call it beautiful. To sacrifice 
all, even principle, for another — what higher proof of 
affection can there be ? O miserable sophistry ! The 
only true affection is that which is subordinate to a higher. 



34 The Bartered Birthright. 

It has been truly said that in those who love little, love is 
a primary affection, — a secondary one in those who love 
much. Be sure he cannot love another much ' who loves 
not honor more.' ' It is unsanctified and Rebekah-like 
love which to-day prompts the mother to conceal her 
son's waywardness and encourages him to seek the com- 
panionship of worldly people because they are people of 
fashion ; which prompts her to teach her daughter to ac- 
cept the attentions of an evil man because he has wealth 
or social position. 

Again, in Rebekah's plot we see one of the earliest ex- 
amples of doing evil that good may come. This satanic 
suggestion that the end justifies the means still comes to 
us all. Sometimes it is very hard to wait for God's provi- 
dence. A slight effort of our own, a trifling misrepre- 
sentation, an unnoticed evasion, an ambiguous letter, a 
little intrigue — and the prize, already so near, may be- 
come our own. What are natural shrewdness and fore- 
sight given us for if not to help ourselves with ? And so 
we pluck the fruit before it is ripe. These attempts to 
force the hand of God are faithless and foolish. God 
had promised that Jacob should have the birthright. 
Could not Rebekah trust His word and wait His time ? 
We cannot declare too plainly or too emphatically that 
however good or sacred the end in view all fraud and de- 
ception and crookedness are hateful to God. As holy 
George Herbert manfully says, " Dare to be true; noth- 
ing can need a lie." And shall we gain any real and 
permanent good by craft ? We are told that high eccle- 
siastical honors, the temporal prosperity of parishes and 
dioceses, liberal endowments for educational and chari- 
table institutions are frequently thus secured ; that the 
fortunes of many estimable laymen can be traced back to 



The Counter-Plot. 35 

some such turning-point. But the unanimous voice of 
Christian experience assures us that while God brings 
good out of evil, nevertheless, every short cut to success 
and every fraudulent gain carries its own penalty with it. 
And what has been our own experience ? What have we 
gained by trickery ? Either we have failed to win by our 
arts, or they have recoiled against ourselves, or our seem- 
ing success is but temporary, and in reality a curse and 
not a blessing. " That which is won ill will never wear 
well." Thank God, the Church of the English-speaking 
people has never failed to maintain that guile is a proof 
of weakness; that a gentleman and a Christian must play 
the man and speak the truth ! 

Furthermore, this old narrative is clear in its morals. 
We see that Rebekah cannot sin and go free. The pun- 
ishment God meted out to her was poetical in its justice. 
In a few days her dear Jacob, for whom she sinned, is 
sent empty-handed away from home; and his mother 
never sees him again in this world. 

What we all want, then, is a heart that is free from 
guile. One of the English poets tells us, " An honest 
man 's the noblest work of God," and the Psalmist said, 
1 Truly God is loving unto Israel, even unto such as are 
of a clean heart." " Blessed is the man unto whom the 
Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no 
guile," — one, that is, whose daily life is quite free from 
oblique arts and treacherous thoughts, who has no deceit 
or craftiness in him ; who possesses his soul with patience 
when his plans seem to miscarry, and when things turn 
against him holds fast to his faith that God will in due 
season " make his righteousness as clear as the light, 
and his just dealing as the noonday." No other inner 
life can please a holy God or win His reward here or 



2,6 The Bartered Birthright. 

hereafter. Sincerity, honesty, straightforward ways and 
words, are therefore the ideals which we must ever set 
before ourselves. The story of Rebekah's guile will not 
have been written in vain if it leads one of us to form the 
resolution henceforth to forsake such hateful practices ; 
to be sure that we not only aim to accomplish ends that 
are honorable, but that we also seek to bring them to 
pass by means equally fair and open, never forgetting 
that 

" Him, only him, the shield of Heaven defends 
Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends." 



THE STOLEN BLESSING. 

WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." — 
Gen. xxvii. 22. 

TO-DAY we reach the story of the stolen blessing. 
When his mother proposed the plot to Jacob, his 
conscience for a time held him back. A philosopher has 
said that some persons follow the dictates of their con- 
science only in the sense in which a coachman may be 
said to follow the horses he is driving. If this be a cor- 
rect description of Rebekah's present relation to her 
conscience we might add that when she whipped up the 
horses they started off at full speed. Jacob — to carry on 
the illustration — might be described as a passenger who, 
with many misgivings, has been all but thrust into the 
coach by force of hands, yet who soon, entering into the 
spirit of the adventure, resolves to expect a safe and 
profitable journey. 

To return to the narrative : Jacob, with the goatskins 
upon his neck, took the savory dish in his hand and en- 
tered his father's chamber. Carefully imitating Esau's 
voice, he addressed Isaac with the usual Oriental saluta- 
tion. Isaac failed to recognize the disguised tones; and 
in some uncertainty the blind old eyes turned toward the 
visitor and the feeble voice inquired, " Who art thou, 
my son ? " Jacob had hoped to accomplish his purpose 
— to secure his own — with a few " white lies," and with 
no great effort. Now his keen mind is instantly awake 

37 



38 The Bartered Birthright. 

to the fact that he has entered upon a hazardous under- 
taking. If he would succeed he must allay his father's 
suspicions at whatever cost. Without a moment's hesi- 
tation he shows himself an accomplished liar; heaping 
falsehood upon falsehood: " I am Esau, thy first-born " 
— lie number one; ;< I have done according as thou 
badest me " — lie number two; " Arise, I pray thee, and 
eat of my venison *' — lie number three. One lie usually 
requires another to support or conceal it ; and Jacob 
soon found himself " drifting, drifting from the great 
shore of truth, like one carried out by the tide against 
his will." Surprised that Esau should have returned so 
early from the hunt, Isaac asks, with the curiosity of 
age, " How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my 
son ? " With reckless blasphemy Jacob declares that 
God has helped him, " Because the Lord thy God 
brought it to me," or, more literally, " Because the 
Lord thy God gave me good speed." But even in this 
solemn assertion the sharp ear of the blind old man de- 
tects an accent which arouses his suspicions afresh and 
he determines to satisfy himself by the sense of touch. 
" And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, 
that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very 
son Esau or not ; " and Jacob, with a boldness worthy of 
a better cause, " went near unto Isaac, his father; and he 
felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the 
hands are the hands of Esau ; " and he said, apparently 
satisfied when he had felt the hair of the goat-skins, but 
still demanding one more positive and unqualified asser- 
tion, " Art thou my very son Esau ? " " Had it been 
I," says Martin Luther, " I should have let the dish fall 
and run away in terror." But Jacob is ready for the last 
lie. Each step in his downfall is marked with grosser 



The Stolen Blessing. 39 

hypocrisy and deeper guilt — so facile is the descent into 
Avernus — and Jacob declares, with unruffled composure, 
" I am." 

Isaac's doubts were dispelled. He accepted the sa- 
vory meat, the bread and the wine, and bestowed upon 
the impostor the blessing of Abraham. Both temporal 
and spiritual dominion were imparted to Jacob. He 
should possess " the fatness of the land, and be lord over 
his brethren." Although Isaac believed that he was 
blessing Esau his words were inspired, for unconsciously 
he was fulfilling the will of God. Jacob was the chosen 
heir of the Covenant, the blessing belonged to him, and, 
in spite of his father's sin in seeking to give it to an- 
other, in spite of the fact that he secured it by tricks and 
treachery, the blessing was duly and actually made over 
to him in accordance with the will of God: — "And his 
father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, 
my son. And he came near and kissed him: and he 
smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and 
said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field 
which the Lord hath blessed : Therefore God give thee 
of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and 
plenty of corn and wine: Let people serve thee, and 
nations bow down to thee : be lord over thy brethren, 
and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be 
every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that 
blesseth thee." This blessing was a prophecy which was 
fulfilled to the letter in the days to come. It bestowed 
upon the Heel-catcher and Supplanter the primacy he 
had long coveted and plotted for, which he finally won 
by shameful fraud. 

Jacob's sin in all its naked hideousness is frankly set 
down in Scripture narrative, and we have not attempted 



40 The Bartered Birthright. 

to gloss over the record. But Jacob is the hero of the 
tale; his future course is to occupy our thoughts during 
the days of Lent ; and you will naturally ask whether 
nothing can be said in excuse or extenuation of his sin. 
Yes, there are excuses for Jacob. 

i. In the first place, one whom he loved and regarded 
as wiser and holier than himself led him into temptation. 
And Rebekah was a tempter of the tempters. A woman 
of great strength of character, of quick wit and pleasing 
manner, she had also the advantage of the experiences 
of age. In these days we hear a great deal of " mag- 
netic " men and of their success as politicians, promoters, 
and leaders; of the " new" woman and her ingeni- 
ous, irresistible, audacious methods of accomplishing 
her own ends. As a matter of fact, although it may 
seem a strange thing to our ears, there is no human being 
so difficult to resist, so absolutely sure of having her own 
way, as a strong, shrewd, wily, determined old woman of 
gentle blood and breeding. Age multiplies her power. 
Of this fact the great masters of fiction are not ignorant, 
and it is corroborated by our own experience. And if to 
strength of will, and the lessons of past failures and suc- 
cesses, and long practice in the art of persuasion we add 
a deep religious conviction that she is called to be an in- 
strument in fulfilling the designs of Providence — in such 
hands the best of us are as wax. Jacob was outmatched. 

2. We should also remember that Jacob felt a prick of 
conscience when the wickedness was proposed to him, 
which is more than can be said for any other actor in this 
domestic drama; and that he had little beside that prick 
of conscience to restrain him. Our present moral stand- 
ard has been a matter of slow growth. Take the utter- 
ances of two representative Church people as the best 



The Stolen Blessing. 41 

nineteenth-century estimate of all over-reaching, deceit, 
and guile. Mrs. Jameson writes: " All my own experi- 
ence of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the 
fear. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either 
shallow, or, on some points, diseased." Mr. Ruskin, 
speaking of the same failing, says: " It is the intensest 
rendering of vulgarity, absolute and utter." But in 
Jacob's day the race had reached no such standard of 
manners or morals. It is more than possible that Jacob's 
guile was recorded, for one reason, to teach the ages all 
along a nobler and diviner code. 

3. Notice, too, that when he lied and personated and 
blasphemed, Jacob was an unconverted man. He had 
received the rite of circumcision, he had enjoyed a re- 
ligious training, but as yet he had seen no Ladder-vision 
nor wrestled with any nameless Friend. His sin was the 
sin of one who has never consciously dedicated himself to 
God's service or felt the touch of heaven upon his heart. 

4. Again, Jacob was punished for his sin. At once he 
was banished from his home for years and from his 
mother forever. All his life long this deceiver was de- 
ceived ; and he received the due reward of his deeds. 
Let us pity Jacob, then, and judge him with no hard 
judgment; for it is written of him, " Blessed be he that 
blesseth thee," and we would make that blessing our 
own. 

The story of Jacob's temptation and fall also suggests 
two practical lessons, one of warning, one of encourage- 
ment. 

The fact that he was led into evil by another may 
admonish us to watch and pray lest we lead into tempta- 
tion those who love and trust us. Holy men speak of 
nine ways of leading others into sin, or of participating 



42 The Bartered Birthright. 

in another's sin : by counsel, by command, by consent, 
by provocation, by praise or flattery, by concealment, by 
partaking, by silence, by defence of the ill done. In 
each and every one of these ways Rebekah participated 
in Jacob's sin. To make a careful self-examination lest 
in some of these ways our own influence and example be 
evil will be work for Lent. 

The lesson of encouragement is, that although Jacob 
sinned God did not cast him off or cease to love him. 
He brought good out of evil; and finally Jacob became 
the Prince of God. Let us take courage. We may see 
in ourselves much that was in fallen Jacob; but if God 
chastened and forgave and loved him, surely there is 
hope for us. " Though ye have lain among the pots, 
yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove that is covered with 
silver wings, and her feathers like gold." 



THE BITTER CRY. 

THURSDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great 
and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, 
O my father." — Gen. xxvii. 34. 

ISAAC'S blindness made possible the deception prac- 
tised upon him. Of all the ills which flesh is heir to, 
probably few of us would, if we had the power of choice, 
choose blindness. The thought of sightlessness brings 
with it the chill of death. To see no more the stars that 
gem the sky, the flowers that jewel the green robe of 
nature, the lights and shadows dancing on the hills, in 
helplessness to be fed and led, to read no more, nor ever 
again to see in this world the faces that we love — this is 
blindness. Nevertheless the blind man clings to life, 
and does good or evil, is good or evil, even as we 
who have sight. In blind Milton's lament for his lost 
sight there is a beautiful prayer which might well be 
offered by those whose natural sight is undimmed : 
' Thou, Celestial Light, shine inward ; all mists from 
thence purge and disperse." 

Blind Isaac was on the side of righteousness ; his life 
in its controlling purposes, in the habit of its career, was 
a God-fearing life; but for once and for the time being 
he has fallen into mortal sin. In the sinfulness of self- 
will he decides to bless profane Esau ; he thinks he has 
accomplished his purpose ; in reality he has imparted the 
blessing to Jacob, who in his dissimulation and his 

43 



44 The Bartered Birthright. 

disguise is, after all, the son to whom the blessing belongs. 
But the blind old man believes that he has blessed Esau, 
his first-born and the best beloved. When Jacob retires 
with his blessing Isaac doubtless reclines upon his couch 
of skin in the buoyant and blithesome contentment of a 
man who has made his point. Notwithstanding his 
blindness and feebleness, he has triumphed. He has out- 
manoeuvred his manoeuvring wife and out-plotted his plot- 
ting son. The satisfaction of his agreeable reflections, 
however, is rudely broken into by a loud voice and a 
heavy footfall at the door. " And it came to pass," we 
read, " as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing 
Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the pre- 
sence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother," the real 
Esau, " came in from his hunting." The startling facts 
were soon discovered. When Isaac realized that invol- 
untarily and unconsciously he had blessed the Lord's 
choice, " he trembled very exceedingly — he trembled 
with a great trembling, greatly." He did not tremble 
with anger at the duplicity of Rebekah and Jacob, nor 
with amazement at this unexpected defeat of his heart's 
desire ; he trembled with alarm at the sudden retribution 
of his sin in attempting to thwart the purpose of God. 
He was the heir of promise and he had the spiritual in- 
sight at once to perceive the hand of God in the day's 
doings and grace to submit to the will of God. " I have 
blessed him," he said to Esau, " yea, and he shall be 
blessed." 

" And when Esau heard the words of his father, he 
cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry," literally, for 
the expressive Hebrew words are more graphic, " he 
cried a cry, great and bitter exceedingly, and said unto 
his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father." 



The Bitter Cry. 45 

In this mingled cry of anger and envy and anguish 
Esau showed that he had no discernment of spiritual 
things. He did not recognize the hand of God in the 
events of the day. He looked upon his father merely as 
a powerful chieftain who could do what he would with his 
own. He thought the blessing of Abraham carried with 
it some worldly advantages and that his tears and suppli- 
cations might induce his father to change his mind and 
give him a part at least of the inheritance. To this bitter 
cry Isaac resolutely refused to yield. He acknowledged 
Jacob's duplicity, " Thy brother came with subtility," at 
the same time declaring that he cannot recall the past, 
for " he hath taken away thy blessing." In reply Esau 
accused his brother and said, " Is he not rightly named 
Jacob — the Supplanter, the Heel-catcher? " Finding that 
this outburst of indignation failed to move his father, 
he resorted once more to tears and entreaties, " Hast 
thou not reserved a blessing for me, O my father ? " 
When Esau thus sought a lesser or secondary blessing 
he had in mind chiefly the " corn and wine," earthly 
goods and earthly honor; he manifested nothing of 
that spirit which animated the Syro-Phcenician woman, 
of whom we shall read in next Sunday's Gospel, who re- 
minded our Lord that even the dogs eat of the crumbs 
which fall from their master's table, and who was ready to 
accept any spiritual privilege which might in mercy be be- 
stowed upon her. On the contrary Esau took the bitter 
and envious tone of the elder son in the parable, " Thou 
never gavest me a kid." But Esau will not be refused. 
With a persistency and a pathos which touch us to this 
day he cried again, " Hast thou but one blessing, my 
father ? Bless me, even me also, O my father. And 
Esau lifted up his voice and wept." 



46 The Bartered Birthright. 

It is to be feared that one of our hymns which contains 
the refrain, " Even me, even me," is based upon an 
erroneous interpretation of the passage before us, al- 
though the hymn considered in itself may not be es- 
pecially open to criticism. It is certain that much 
harm has been done by a popular misunderstanding of 
the New Testament reference to Esau's present frame of 
mind and heart. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we 
read, " Esau found no place for repentance, though he 
sought it carefully with tears." This does not mean 
that Esau desired to repent of sins and could not. What 
could be falser than such an affirmation ? Whenever any 
soul anywhere truly seeks to repent, repentance has al- 
ready begun. Esau did not confess that he had sinned, 
he felt no sorrow for sin, he made no resolution of amend- 
ment. His actual spiritual state is revealed by his own 
words : " The days of mourning for my father are at 
hand: then will I slay my brother Jacob." When he 
wept before his father his tears were idle tears ; they did 
not spring from the depths of some divine despair. There 
was nothing divine in his grief. His repentance consisted 
in wishing to undo what had been done. His first 
thought was of the inheritance, and he was, in fact, con- 
testing his father's will before the death of the testator. 
It may be, too, that as he wept some sobering thought 
came to him of the days that were no more. If so, he was 
learning the lesson many of us know so well. The clock 
will not strike again for us the hours that are gone. The 
mill will not grind again with the water that is past. 
Deeds are irrevocable. 

There are three kinds of false repentance which may 
be mentioned : 

1. The first we shall call a Lent Repentance. Boswell, 



The Bitter Cry. 47 

the biographer of Dr. Johnson, furnishes an example. 
When his own diary saw the light we learned that he was 
the slave of two besetting and deadly sins. Still, as Lent 
came round, he made his vow of penitence and kept it 
too — so long as Lent lasted. He gives us to understand 
that he intended to wrestle with his sin and keep it down 
only until Easter Day. " Then," he seems to say with 
an older sinner, " I will seek it yet again." 

2. A second form of false repentance is the repentance 
of one who is found out. So little value has such sorrow 
for sin that it seldom leads to a changed life. In fact it 
does not deserve the name of repentance, for it regrets 
not the deed but its detection. As some one has said, 

' Thou shalt not get found out," is not one of God's 
commandments, and no man can be saved by trying to 
keep it. The warning of Holy Scripture goes further 
and deeper: " Be sure your sin will find you out." 

3. Esau is an example of the third form of repentance. 
He weeps not for what he has done but for what he has 
lost. The past, however, is unalterable. Wasted oppor- 
tunities, words of passion, deeds of shame, can never be 
recalled. We must reap whatsoever we have sown. 

Let us take home with us the thought of a true repent- 
ance. The counterfeit coin is proof that there is a 
genuine coinage. And if there be a false repentance we 
know that there is a godly sorrow for sin. The marvel- 
lous mercy and the inexhaustible and inexpressible love 
revealed in the Gospel still hold out hope for us all. St. 
Paul can rejoice that his converts are " made sorry after 
a godly manner." May that " godly sorrow," which 
" worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of " 
be felt in our hearts and shown forth in our lives. 

Remember too that from Christ our Lord comes the 



48 The Bartered Birthright. 

grace of contrition as well as the pardon of sin and the 
strength for amendment of life. That grace enables the 
true penitent to see and feel that he has broken his 
Heavenly Father's law and grieved that Father's heart 
of love; the thought which dominates all his thoughts 
and never leaves him is, that he has sinned against God. 
This is the language of his heart: " Against Thee only 
have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight." And it 
follows that the genuineness of sorrow for sin is proved 
when our sorrows " bring forth fruits meet for repent- 
ance." In the terse statement of St. Ambrose, " True 
repentance is to cease from sin." 

" 'T is to bewail the sins thou didst commit ; 
And not commit those sins thou hast bewailed. 
He that bewails, and not forsakes them too, 
Confesses rather what he means to do." 



THE ANGER OF ESAU. 

FRIDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father 
blessed him : And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my 
father are at hand ; then will I slay my brother Jacob." — Gen. xxvii. 41. 

WHAT a man says in his heart reveals the man. 
The inward conversation is a spiritual barometer 
which the Recording Angel keeps ever under his sight. 
When Esau discovered that his brother had over-reached 
him and won the blessing, his anger knew no bounds; 
he " hated Jacob," we are told, " and said in his heart, 

I will slay my brother." 

The hating heart still remains upon the earth. Our 
text, which calls attention to the sin of anger, is, there- 
fore, neither obsolete nor untimely. 

The word "anger " is derived from a Latin root signify- 
ing, primarily, a choking, an oppression of the throat. An- 
ger has been defined as " a strong passion or emotion of 
the mind, excited by a real or supposed injury to, or intent 
to injure, one's self or others," It has also been called 

II a temporary madness." But we all know what anger 
is. Derivations and definitions are superfluous. 

It is true that there are times and occasions when we 
have a right to be angry. There is a righteous indigna- 
tion. Our Blessed Lord Himself knew such anger, for 
he fiercely rebuked oppression and hypocrisy, and with 
bitter words and blows drove the money-changers from 
the temple. The Epistles recognize this aspect of the 

49 



50 The Bartered Birthright. 

subject: " Be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go 
down upon your wrath; " If it be possible, as much as 
lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." 

These, and other similar passages, teach us that there 
are times when we cannot keep down our anger, and that 
there are some things against which it would be a sin not 
to feel the keenest anger. And what is it that justifies 
anger ? In plain, unmistakable words, when and where 
is wrath a Christian virtue ? Let a holy man of old give 
us the answer: " He that would be angry and sin not, 
must not be angry with anything but sin." 

On the other hand do we not all know to our sorrow 
that there is an anger like Esau's, an anger which is not 
righteous, which is evil from its inception, or, if justified 
at first, soon develops into the blackest guilt ? That sin 
the Church has placed in the list of the seven deadly sins. 
And like other sins, this sin of anger passes through the 
three phases of thought, word, and deed. Almost irre- 
sistibly, and sometimes with astonishing rapidity, anger 
proceeds from thought to word and from word to deed. 

In a Lenten sermon we expect plain-speaking. Now, 
the truth of the matter is that we Americans are an irri- 
table and short-tempered people. One of the first things 
we notice in travelling abroad is the universal good- 
temper of the natives ; even the surly Briton seems to us 
a model of pleasantness and amiability. A young 
American once journeyed direct from a southwestern 
frontier town to London. In that frontier settlement 
one room was the post-office, hotel parlor, department 
store, saloon, and only place of general assemblage. 
And every night a company of desperadoes came in from 
the hills and took possession. Finally a quiet, slender 
young man, who thought he could maintain order, was. 



The Anger of Esau. 51 

installed behind the bar. He used the only effective 
measures and soon was master of the place. But it was 
noticed that whenever this quiet young man shot to kill, 
he first turned pale with anger. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
somewhere says that when the fighting boy of his school 
met the village bully, the issue ceased to be doubtful as 
soon as the students' champion turned pale. But in 
London, during his stay of several months, our traveller 
did not see a single man turn pale with anger. Neither 
can it be denied that the American woman has a temper 
of her own. Are not sharp words, sullen looks, and 
angry actions, on the part of women of station and refine- 
ment, frequently to be observed in our streets and cars 
and shops ? In the old country, on the contrary, such 
manifestations, as many witnesses bear record, are very 
rare. And what shall we say of our homes ? We may 
cast the blame upon our dry climate, which is doubtless 
bad for the nerves. Still the fact remains that in multi- 
tudes of our Christian homes angry women's voices rise, 
frightening happiness away. Do sweet and sunny tem- 
pers really reign in your home ? Then you need envy 
none, and you have much to be thankful for. I have 
sometimes thought that if one of those ingenious instru- 
ments invented by Mr. Edison, which receives and repro- 
duces all that is said before it, were placed in all our 
homes and opened on Sunday morning in a general gath- 
ering of the family, so that each one of us could hear 
every word we had spoken in the home during the week, 
and catch the actual tone and accent, we might, when we 
reached church, pray with a far deeper sense of need, 
" Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners." Real, 
practical, every-day Christianity often turns upon this 
yery question of temper. And the more we think of it 



52 The Bartered Birthright. 

the more truth there seems to be in that somewhat start- 
ling saying attributed to a well-known English bishop, 

Temper is nine tenths of Christianity." 

It is also to be noted that temper, good and bad, is 
catching. In an old letter, James Freeman Clarke de- 
scribes a journey from his home in Boston to Kentucky. 
He travelled by stage-coach, and he noticed that one 
cross and complaining and ill-natured passenger could put 
all the others out of temper. ' But once," he says, 
" when journeying through the Cattaraugus woods, 
where the road was mostly deep mire or rough corduroy, 
and there was every temptation to be cross and uncom- 
fortable, one man so enlivened and entertained our party* 
and was so accommodating and good-natured, that we 
seemed to be having a pleasant picnic, and the other in- 
mates of the coach took the same tone." What was true 
of that old stage-coach is true to-day of the shop, the 
office, the mill, the school, and the home. 

But alas! the evil of which we are speaking does not 
end in the miseries of social unpleasantness. What a 
brood of malignant passions and fiendish deeds springs 
from this one root-sin. Every student knows the sig- 
nificance of words. Let us take a partial list of the words 
in our own tongue, in common use, which express some 
of the phases of this sin of anger: Prejudice, false judg- 
ment, envy, malice, spite, antipathy, displeasure, enmity, 
abhorrence, animosity, aversion, detestation, dislike, 
grudge, hostility, ill-will, malevolence, malignity, rancor, 
repugnance, revenge, choler, exasperation, ire, irritation, 
offence, impatience, fretfulness, indignation, passion, 
peevishness, pettishness, petulance, acrimony, acer- 
bity, asperity, bitterness, unkindness, virulence, caustic- 
ity, harshness, moroseness, severity, sourness, tartness, 



The Anger of Esau. 53 

churlishness, crabbedness, crustiness, doggedness, gloomi- 
ness, gruffness, ill-humor, snappishness, sulkiness, sullen- 
ness, surliness, abusiveness, quarrelsomeness, savageness, 
vindictiveness, hatred, wrath, rage, fury, cruelty, murder. 
This list is not exhaustive, and yet what a catalogue of 
unlovely human characteristics do these words reveal ! 
We must admit, too, that these words were not coined 
needlessly, and that each one of them really does describe 
some manifestation in men and women of this root-sin of 
anger. 

Take hatred alone. If ever you hated any one, you 
know what unhappiness is. Hannah More said, " If I 
wanted to punish an enemy, it would be by fastening on 
him the trouble of constantly hating somebody." And 
hatred soon passes into a longing for revenge. " I will 
get even with him." Does that thought come to you 
from time to time ? Banish it, for it comes straight from 
hell. In our text Esau declared that he would have re- 
venge — " I will kill my brother." Truly says the 
Apostle of love, " He that hateth his brother is a mur- 
derer." " And ye know," he says again, " that no 
murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." 

As Christians we are pledged to follow the example of 
our Saviour Christ, who, when He was reviled, reviled 
not again ; and forgave and prayed for those who did the 
wrong. To cherish hatred, to be unforgiving, to long 
for revenge, is to be un-Christlike. All who have ever 
been close followers of the Master have been forgiving. 
Of Cranmer it was said, " If you want him to do you a 
good turn you must do him a bad one." 

And now comes the practical question, how shall we 
overcome this sin ? Jeremy Taylor's rule is a good one: 
" If anger arises suddenly and violently, first restrain it 



54 The Bartered Birthright. 

with consideration, and then let it end in a hearty prayer 
for him who did the real or seeming injury. The former 
of the two stops its growth; the latter quite kills it." 

To forgive is Christlike. Not to forgive unfits us to 
receive the Holy Communion or to say the Lord's Prayer. 
Wherefore " let all bitterness and wrath and anger and 
clamor and evil speaking be put away from you, with 
all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tender- 
hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's 
sake hath forgiven you." 



THE DAUGHTERS OF HETH. 

SATURDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And Rebekah said unto Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the 
daughters of Heth." — Gen. xxvii. 46. 

WHAT was the cause and occasion of this character- 
istic utterance of the text ? It was the quarrel 
between Esau and Jacob. Jacob had deceived his father 
and gained the blessing of promise. Esau had received a 
lesser blessing — a fat land and a roving life — the career 
for which he had prepared himself. And so his name 
henceforth became " Edom " and his children were called 
the Edomites. Later on Jacob's name also was changed 
and he became " Israel " and his descendants were the 
children of Israel. And there was enmity between the 
two. 

The blessings of Isaac were, therefore, prophecies as 
well as blessings, as the commentators have pointed out, 
and were not limited to the personal histories of the twin 
brothers, but prefigured also the destinies of the nations 
of which they were the founders. In this sense we are 
to interpret the words of a later Scripture, " Jacob have 
I loved but Esau have I hated." Edom was for cen- 
turies the foe of Israel and then became the synonym of 
evil, while Israel represented the cause of God in the 
world and foretold the Church of Christ. Jacob was the 
spiritual man and to him belonged the spiritual heritage; 
Esau was the natural man and could be the legitimate 
heir only of the things of the world. In this larger sense 

55 



56 The Bartered Birthright. 

they were pictures and prophecies, for an age which re- 
quired such concrete conceptions, to represent the prin- 
ciples of good and evil and the conflict between them. 
Neither was the representation marred by the fact that 
one brother was not wholly good nor the other wholly 
bad. One believed in the earth, and the other believed 
in the things above his head. Here was a distinction, 
vital, unmistakable. The rudest tribesman would in- 
stantly grasp the significance of that distinction. 

" And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing where- 
with his father blessed him " — a hatred that lasted as 
long as the nations of Edom and Israel lasted, a hatred 
that still lasts. " And Esau said in his heart, The days 
of mourning for my father are at hand ; then will I slay 
my brother Jacob." In these words we see that while 
Esau stands for the principle of evil he was not himself 
entirely devoid of good natural feelings and dispositions. 
He loved his father. He would not embitter his father's 
dying hours with the horror of bloodshed. He would 
wait until his father died in peace, was decently buried, 
and dutifully mourned for; then he would murder Jacob. 

We are told that Esau " said in his heart I will slay my 
brother!" As the days passed, however, he probably 
took some of his dependants or hunting companions into 
his confidence, for his mother was in some way informed 
of his determination and at once devised a plan to pre- 
vent his crime. " And she sent and called Jacob, her 
younger son, and said unto him, Behold, thy brother 
Esau, as touching thee, doth comfort himself, purposing 
to kill thee. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice; 
and arise, flee thou to Laban, my brother, to Haran ; and 
tarry with him a few days, until thy brother's fury turn 
away." She knows that Esau is an impulsive man. If 



The Daughters of Heth. 57 

Jacob will keep out of his sight for a few days she is con- 
fident that Esau's anger will subside. " Then I will send 
and fetch you from thence ; for why should I be deprived 
of you both in one day ? " 

Jacob realized his danger and eagerly agreed to this 
temporary banishment from home. But Jacob could not 
go away without his father's knowledge and consent. 
To win that consent Rebekah resorted to a subterfuge. 
She wished to conceal from Isaac the dreadful tragedy 
which brooded over his house — surely it could not be 
wrong to let the old man die in peace; and so she once 
more employed those subterranean methods in the use of 
which she was by no means a novice. She went at once 
to Isaac's chamber and set up a great weeping and lamen- 
tation over the shortcomings of Esau's heathen wives: 
' I am weary of my life because of the daughters of 
Heth!" The modern querulousness which likewise de- 
clares its weariness of life and asks, " Is life worth liv- 
ing ? " if not as insincere as Rebekah was, would do well 
to ask itself if Rebekah's sin is not at the root of that 
inner dissatisfaction and disappointment which prompts 
such utterance. Rebekah craftily continues her passion 
of weeping, will not hear a word of comfort, holds on 
with her assumed grief, and keeps it up until she sees that 
her husband also is very weary of the little life that re- 
mains to him. At this point she is ready for another 
move. And so, calming herself somewhat, she shrewdly 
suggests, without seeming to do so, a remedy for her dis- 
tress: " If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, 
which are the daughters of the land, what good shall my 
life do me ? " Man-like, Isaac walks straight into the 
trap. So long as his wife wailed over the faults of her 
daughters-in-law he was as helpless as any man in similar 



58 The Bartered Birthright. 

circumstances, but when Jacob is mentioned he sees his 
way clear. " Jacob is still single," he says, "and I will as- 
sert my authority in his case. The boy shall do as I did. 
He shall go at once to Padan-aram and get a wife. I 
found a good and beautiful wife there and so may Jacob. 
Call him, and I will start him on his journey. We will 
hear no more of the daughters of Heth. ' ' Thereupon Re- 
bekah dries her tears and goes away in search of Jacob. 

When Jacob enters the chamber his father immediately 
gives him his command: " Thou shalt not take a wife of 
the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-aram, to 
the house of Bethuel thy mother's father; and take thee 
a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's 
brother." Then he voluntarily and deliberately bestows 
upon Jacob once more the blessing already secured by 
fraud: " God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruit- 
ful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude 
of people; and give thee the blessing of Abraham." 
Thus blessed, Jacob departs upon his eventful journey. 

The narrative before us this morning suggests three 
thoughts which we shall do well to carry home and 
remember. 

i. See, first, how short-sighted men and women are. 
Isaac supposed that death was near. Esau said, " My 
father will die in a few hours ; then I will slay my brother. ' ' 
But they were mistaken. Isaac lived forty-three long 
years more, and Esau never slew his brother. Rebekah 
thought Jacob would return to her in a few days, and 
Jacob imagined that when his father died he would take 
his place and be reunited to his mother; but they, too, 
were mistaken. Rebekah never saw Jacob again, and 
Jacob's absence was not for a few days only, but for 
twenty years. How true it is that man proposes and 



The Daughters of Heth. 59 

God disposes ! How true is the Scripture saying, " Boast 
not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a 
day may bring forth." 

2. Again, what was it that broke up that old home and 
embittered the life of all its inmates ? Each one of us 
knows to his own shame and sorrow what it was ; it was 
what Amiel, who has so deeply impressed himself upon 
the present generation, calls " an instinct of revolt, an 
enemy of law, the savage within us, seditious, impious, 
insolent, refractory, opposed to and contemptuous of all 
that tries to rule ; " what Byron calls 

" That pang, where more than madness lies, 
The worm that will not sleep and never dies ; " 

what the New Testament calls sin; that burden on 
the soul which no son or daughter of Adam ever wholly 
escapes. Nor can we escape the consequences of sin. 
As the shadow follows the body so the conscious- 
ness of guilt follows sin. When you walk toward the 
rising sun the shadow lurks behind you ; as the day 
advances the shadow reaches your side; at high noon, 
small, faint, but visible, it is beneath your feet; as the 
day hastens into the west, the shadow boldly goes before 
lengthening, darkening. As long as you have a body 
and the light lasts the shadow goes with you. So sin 
shadows the soul. Can we look within ourselves, steadily, 
honestly, and wonder that there should be a Good Friday 
and a Cross on Calvary ? Beholding that Cross, realizing 
the need of that Sacrifice, with true faith in its power to 
make atonement for sin, shall we not fall upon our knees 
and cry, " O Lord Jesus Christ, pardon what I have been, 
sanctify what I am, and order what I shall be, that Thine 
may be the glory and mine the eternal salvation ? " 



60 The Bartered Birthright. 

3. The narrative before us also recalls that blessed pro- 
phecy contained in one of our Holy Week Epistles. Isaiah 
there speaks of the conflict between sin and holiness pre- 
figured in the enmity between Edom and Israel, and he 
foresees its end. " Who is this that cometh from Edom 
with dyed garments from Bozrah ? " And the Divine 
One replies, " I that speak in righteousness, mighty to 
save, I have trodden the wine press alone, and the year 
of My redeemed is come." All that Esau or Edom sym- 
bolized was overthrown on Calvary. It remains for us 
only to make that victory our own. Good and evil will 
not contend forever. The issue is not uncertain. The 
struggle is not unending. On which side are we to-day ? 
Can we say, " Thanks be to God which giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ ?" 



THE DREAM. 

MONDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because 
the sun was set ; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for 
his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed." — 
Gen. xxviii. n, 12. 

JACOB'S sin has found him out. He is banished from 
home. Banishment is the first fruit of his blessing. 
Nominally he is going away to find a wife ; in reality, and 
first of all, he is leaving his childhood's home to escape 
his brother's murderous purpose of revenge. His heart is 
heavy as he plods on alone through unfamiliar scenes; 
and he is forced to acknowledge to himself that he is 
suffering the due reward of his deeds. But, although he 
knows it not, God's love is seeking him out in his pun- 
ishment and preparing the providences through which he 
is to be trained for a larger benediction. 

Jacob's journey led him northward over tracts known 
in later times as the highlands of Judea and Samaria — 
historic ground for the future. On the second or third 
day, towards evening, he reached a certain hill-top " and 
tarried there all night." Modern travellers give us vivid 
descriptions of this rugged elevation. As Jacob looked 
about before composing himself to sleep he would notice 
that he was almost entirely surrounded by the rocky 
peaks which stood near by like sentinels keeping watch 
upon the place. In one direction only was there an open- 
ing among the heights, and through this his eye would 

61 



62 The Bartered Birthright. 

take in a long stretch of open country and, beyond it, the 
hills and valleys " gradually receding and reaching in a 
long succession to Mount Moriah and the hills which in 
later times stood round about Jerusalem. " Yes, fourteen 
miles in the distance he could see Mount Moriah, where, 
on an altar, his father Isaac had once lain with the sacri- 
ficial knife gleaming over him — a type of that true Isaac 
who in the fulness of time should offer Himself upon 
that same Mount Moriah and suffer death upon the Cross 
for our redemption; making there, by His one oblation 
of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the 
whole world. We do not know whether he recalled the 
past or foresaw the future. Probably never before had 
he been so far from the level plains of Beersheba, and 
the grandeur of the strange, new panorama stretching 
before him must have quickened and brought to a 
climax the serious and solemn thoughts which had ac- 
companied him on his journey. As the darkness falls 
he finds a stone for his pillow. Alone, helpless, going he 
knows not whither, his sin rises before him, torments 
him, convicts him ! The blessing for which he has sinned, 
what is it ? Now that it is his own, will it bring him 
comfort or protection ? With his head on the stone and 
his eyes turned upward to the stars, in the loneliness and 
silence of the mountains, we may believe that his soul 
lifted itself up to God in repentance for the past and in 
faith for the future. It must have been so. The vision 
of that night was not disclosed to a heart unprepared for 
the gracious revelation. 

At length he slept, and in that sleep, he dreamed his 
Dream. He fell asleep — 

" A sleep full of sweet dreams." 



The Dream. 63 

Dreams have a literature of their own. In all our 
classics there are allusions to them. The Old Testament 
contains the record of many dreams. In this way God 
often spake to His servants of old. Dreams are also 
recognized in the New Testament as channels of Divine 
communication to the soul. In " a dream which was not 
all a dream " Pontius Pilate's wife suffered many things 
concerning Jesus. 

And we all dream. Usually our dreams are suggested 
or inspired by the events of the day. They seem a 
faint, often a distorted, or broken, or weary repetition 
of our waking thoughts and acts. Hood's " Song of 
the Shirt " is immortal because the common heart rec- 
ognizes in the poor, worn-out, and hungry woman who fell 
asleep over her task and sewed on buttons in a dream, 
the pathetic interpretation of its own experience. So, 
often, with all our tasks; in a dream the driver speaks 
to his horse, the mother cares for her babe, the business 
man buys and sells, the teacher gives instruction, and the 
preacher expounds and exhorts. But there are dreams 
of another sort, wild and wicked dreams, dreams not in- 
spired by any waking act or thought. Have you never 
been shocked and horrified by your own dreams ? an- 
noyed that there is within you, somewhere, so much that 
is violent, impure, or dishonorable ? Probably, however, 
we cannot sin in our sleep. " I talk of dreams," says 
Shakespeare, " which are the children of an idle brain, 
begot of nothing but vain fantasy." Yet holy men have 
taught that frightful dreams and restless sleep may be the 
Spirit's warnings of sinful ways of life and calls to repent- 
ance. Does some one say, " It is indigestion, and not sin, 
that gives people bad dreams ? " But remember that Jesus 
Christ came to save your body as well as your soul ; that 



64 The Bartered Birthright. 

your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that, 
therefore, the self-indulgence, the worry, the over-work, 
which causes broken sleep, may be as much a sin as the 
lie or the hating heart that stings the conscience and 
gives you frightful dreams. And so the day that has 
been passed soberly, temperately, and in the fear of God, 
usually ends in a night of peaceful sleep or beautiful 
dreams, watched over by the holy angels who keep guard 
against the hosts of evil thoughts and evil memories. 

While Jacob slept he dreamed and in that dream there 
came to him a revelation : " And he dreamed, and behold 
a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to 
heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and de- 
scending upon it;" and from the heavenly heights he 
heard the voice of his father's God promising him pro- 
tection and guidance, and blessings, both temporal and 
spiritual. 

Heretofore Jacob has had no personal knowledge of 
the unseen world and there has been ho touch of heaven 
upon his soul. Now he begins to understand the mean- 
ing of the birthright and the blessing ; now he learns that 
the other world is as real as this one and that there is a 
way from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth. 
From this night forward Jacob is a believer. The Vision 
of the Ladder was the turning-point in his spiritual his- 
tory. He rises up a changed man. 

In studying the life of Jacob our chief purpose is to 
trace the steps by which a human soul possessing the 
strongest inborn love of self, with the intellectual strength 
to bend other wills to its will, and to form long purposes 
of personal advancement, and to adhere to them, under 
the discipline of a loving Heavenly Father, develops 
nobler aims, a sensitiveness of conscience, a habit of 



The Dream. 65 

fervent prayer, an intelligent faith, and a readiness to 
submit that masterful will to the will of God. We are 
trying to see how it was that the Heel-catcher became 
Israel, the Prince of God. The narrative before us shows 
when the change began. 

To-day let us confine our attention to one feature of 
Jacob's conversion; I mean the fact that he was alone 
when God spake to his soul. Each human soul comes 
into the world alone and leaves it alone. While it lives 
here it dwells in solitude. Nothing is stranger or more 
solemn than the loneliness of the soul. We are told 
that there are layers of air between the atoms of the 
most closely compacted bodies. Each soul is such an 
atom, distinct, separate; or better still, we are islands 
all in an unbounded sea. The infant has never thought 
" this is I," but in a few years he learns the use of " I " 
and " me," and finds " I am not what I see; and other 
than the things h touch ; " and one day, as the seasons 
pass, " his isolation grows defined." When that solitude 
of the soul is felt, God speaks. With more or less dis- 
tinctness each Christian recalls the day or days when for 
the first time the soul became conscious of its isolation, 
and, in that conscious solitude, heard the Voice Divine. 
Jacob's separation from human companionship was, 
therefore, providential. And so God in mercy arranges 
solitudes for us. We are shut up in a sick room, we are 
called upon a journey, the companions almost always with 
us are separated from us by the changes and chances of 
life and death. Then, when we are alone, the thought 
of personality flashes upon us and God speaks. Is it not 
so ? When you made the great choice between God and 
self you were alone with your Saviour. Each succeeding 
forward movement in the life of grace also dates from a 



66 The Bartered Birthright. 

season of private prayer. Let us, then, not shrink from 
that solitude, but rather seek and love it. The New 
Testament saying, " Many were coming and going and 
there was no leisure," is an alarmingly accurate descrip- 
tion of the life of our own day. Let us make the most 
of the Church's seasons of retirement, and frequently se- 
cure some hour in which we can be alone on the mountain- 
top to behold the Vision of the Ladder that joins earth 
to heaven. 



THE LADDER. 

TUESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top 
of it reached to heaven : and behold the angels of God ascending and de- 
scending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it." — Gen. xxviii. 12, 13. 

THE Vision of the Ladder brought with it a conviction 
which never departed from Jacob's soul. We 
know, too, that it fastened itself upon the memory and 
imagination of his descendants. No Jew ever forgot, 
ever will forget, that his great ancestor saw heaven and 
earth joined together. And Christians from childhood 
have loved and meditated upon that vision. 

In speaking of the ladder our text first tells us when 
the vision came to Jacob, when he was asleep and in 
dreams, and continues the narrative in three descriptive 
clauses, each of which begins with the word " behold." 
These natural divisions we will follow to-day. 

1. " And he dreamed, and behold." Notice the sig- 
nificance of this statement. The narrative is entirely free 
from anything which might awaken suspicion as to its 
veracity. It is not said that Jacob saw the ladder in 
broad daylight, or that he really looked upon it at all. 
We are told that it was a dream. The story of Jacob's 
life runs along almost without exception in the same 
natural way. To be sure, the great facts, the great 
mysteries of mortal life are never concealed ; the folly, 
the pathos, the adventure, the tragedy of his career are 
freely and frankly set before us ; the miraculous element, 

67 



68 The Bartered Birthright. 

however, is almost entirely wanting. There is nothing 
improbable in the whole story, nothing which faith or rea- 
son need question. Yet how often do we hear it said that 
the Old Testament is a mass of myths and marvels, that 
its strange and impossible and unbelievable miracles, the 
record of which almost entirely fills its pages, nullify 
themselves, and that, consequently, these ancient writings 
are obsolete as sources of legitimate ethical and spiritual 
instruction ! The present sad neglect of the Old Testa- 
ment is probably due, in a large measure, to some such 
miserable mistakes. True, it is an old book, dealing with 
the childhood of the race, relating the beginnings of 
God's revelation of His will and character, requiring the 
light of the New Testament for its interpretation ; but all 
this does not warrant its neglect or misrepresentation. 
If it has its miracles, its obscurities, its difficulties, so has 
the New Testament; and the Church from which we re- 
ceive the sacraments of Christ binds both Testaments 
together as the Word of God. In any case it will be safe 
to assume that no doubting criticism can object to the 
statement of the text that Jacob saw his ladder in a 
dream. We may even admit that the framework of his 
dream was suggested by the blocks of sandstone on the 
slopes of the hills where his eyes rested before he slept ; 
that " his surroundings wove themselves " into the fabric 
of his dreams and that the slabs of stone on the sloping 
ascents of the hills " built themselves up into a gigantic 
staircase, reaching from the spot where he lay to the 
starry depths above him." It may have been so. At 
least all was natural as well as supernatural. But in that 
dream God spake to Jacob's soul. 

2. " And behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the 
top of it reached to heaven." In Jacob's ladder we have 



The Ladder. 69 

the first clear intimation of the world to come. It was a 
revelation of the fact of a future life. He saw an open 
heaven and a way of ascent to that blessed abode. 
Henceforth Jacob knew that death does not end all. 
The vision also showed him that reconciliation is possible 
between God and sinful man. The gulf his sin had 
placed between himself and his God could be bridged 
over. 

The many rounds or steps, one above another, in the 
long ascent would teach him that the upward way is toil- 
some and trying — that " heaven is not gained at a single 
bound." Furthermore, the vision of earth joined to 
heaven could not fail to keep ever before him through 
the years to come high and pure ideals of a daily life 
that " slopes through darkness up to God." 

3. " And behold, the angels of God ascending and de- 
scending upon it." It is easy to believe in the angelic 
world of which the Bible speaks. The seraphim and the 
cherubim and their radiant companions are a glorious 
creation readily pictured by the imagination and gladly 
welcomed by faith. It would be abnormal and contrary 
to all the laws of creation were the great spiritual space 
between God and man left tenantless and unbroken. In 
ordered and ever-ascending ranks of beauty, holiness, and 
power they rise from humanity to the Source of all crea- 
tion ; their nature and their loving occupation making 
them objects of the reverent admiration of every in- 
structed and faithful Christian heart. An Apostle tells 
us that they are ministering spirits sent forth to minister 
unto the heirs of salvation ; and our Lord said that the 
angels of His little ones do always behold the face of the 
Father in heaven. Accordingly in every age the Church 
has encouraged her children to believe in guardian angels 



70 The Bartered Birthright 

who are set apart for each of the baptized, to lift upwards 
our confessions and our prayers, to bring back our par- 
dons and our blessings, guiding, guarding, encouraging 
us on earth, and at last bearing away the soul to God 
who gave it. ;< He shall give His angels charge over 
thee to keep thee in all thy ways." The Collect for the 
Feast of St. Michael and All Angels dwells especially 
upon the thought that the angels are the ministers of 
the providence of God in the government of this world, 
and that, in answer to our prayers, they succor and de- 
fend us on earth even as they always do God service in 
heaven. Jacob in his loneliness and banishment and 
misery would recognize in the angel host an assurance of 
the providential care of the Lord his God. 

4. " And, behold, the Lord stood above " the ladder. 
While no man with his bodily eyes has seen God at any 
time, in his dream Jacob saw Him, saw Him above the 
ladder in an attitude of forgiveness and benediction. 
Thus the vision in full taught Jacob, first of all, that there 
was a Providence which would keep him in all his ways. 
That is the very first step in religion. To believe in One 
greater and higher than we, One who has the power and 
the will to save, to whom it may be said, Take me, for 
I am travel-stained and tired — that is the beginning and 
the ending also of all spiritual attainment. Jacob applied 
to himself the vision; it was for him; and from above he 
seemed to hear a voice pledging and promising him all 
blessedness which the dream ladder pictured out of the 
heavenly providence and the heavenly love. 

If we, too, have learned the lesson of faith in Providence 
blessed are we, for to-day, as of old, it distinguishes the 
carnal from the spiritual, the believer from the unbeliever. 
That loving Providence makes all things work together 



The Ladder. 71 

for good for all who love God. Oftentimes it does not 
seem so, and then we are tempted to murmur, tempted 
to take the familiar lines, " There is a Providence that 
shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will," and, 
with the schoolboy, read over the punctuation mark, thus 
turning truth into falsehood, " There is a Providence 
that shapes our ends rough, hew them how we will." 
But God is our father and we are His children. He will 
take care of us. He provideth for all meat in due season. 
We are His jewels. We are as the apple of His eye. 

5. There is something more. Jacob's ladder has a 
deeper meaning. Whether that deeper meaning was re- 
vealed to him in full or in part we know not ; later on, 
however, devout Jews understood that the ladder was a 
type of the Messiah ; and at length, in his conversation 
with Nathanael, the guileless man, as it is recorded in the 
closing verses of the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, 
our Lord Himself interpreted the ladder as prefiguring 
the Incarnation of the Son of God. Christ is the true 
ladder that joins earth to heaven. By His two natures 
in One Person He is God and man — a ladder resting on 
earth and reaching heaven. In the opening of St. John's 
Gospel we have the inspired definition of the Incarnation, 
' The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us;" 
while St. Paul declares that like a ladder He bridges over 
the separation between earth and heaven, for there is 
" One mediator between God and men, the man Christ 
Jesus." 

All, then, that Jacob's ladder meant for him it means 
for us. There is a heaven and its gates are open ; angels 
come and go from earth to that heaven ; there is a Father 
above who cares for us; and under His providential care 
we are safe ; Christ is the one Mediator between men and 



72 The Bartered Birthright. 

God. This old symbol of Christ shows Him to be per- 
fect man and perfect God. Because He is man He is our 
brother and He can feel for us and we can follow His ex- 
ample ; because He is God the Cross is an Atonement, 
and the open grave an Easter ; and so an Apostle can say, 
" To you which believe He is precious." 



THE PROMISE. 

WEDNESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac : the 
land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. . . . And 
in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, 
behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, 
and will bring thee again into this land ; for I will not leave thee." — Gen. 
xxviii. 13, 14, 15. 

IN his dream Jacob saw the Lord, or, according to an- 
other reading, the Glory of the Lord, revealed above 
the ladder. Then from the heavenly heights there fell 
upon his listening ear the gracious message from which 
the text is taken ; a promise shaping all the after life of 
the listener, the Great Promise of the Old Testament and 
of the Jewish Covenant. 

It was a four-fold promise 

1. In the first place it assured Jacob that he was the 
recognized heir of the birthright blessing. " I am the 
Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac/' 

Hereafter the Covenant God will be known as the God 
of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, 
the same Jehovah who is called in the New Testament 
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom 
all the promises are yea and amen. 

2. Again, he was promised a land, " the land whereon 
thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed." And 
we know that this land did become the possession of the 
chosen family and of the chosen people, the Holy Land of 
the past and of the present, a picturesque and significant 

73 



74 The Bartered Birthright 

type of the Promised Land beyond the grave and gate of 
death. 

3. " And," continued the promise, " in thee and in 
thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." 
This is the Great Promise. The Promised One is here 
foretold. The Messiah shall be Jacob's son. 

4. This clears the way for a somewhat fuller examina- 
tion of the final promise of the text. In the plainest 
words a personal promise is now bestowed upon Jacob. 
" And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all 
places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into 
this land ; for I will not leave thee. " When Jacob reached 
the hill-top whereon he should sleep, banished from 
home, in his loneliness, and fear, and sin, he may have 
felt that he was forsaken of God and man. He knew 
not his future and there seemed no present help in time 
of trouble. The thought of another despairing heart 
may have been his own, 

'■' I am as a reed 
Flung from the rock on ocean's foam to sail 
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail." 

Now, however, with this blessed promise his own, all was 
changed. Despair gave way to confidence and courage. 
" I am with thee; I will keep thee; I will not leave 
thee." Was this word of the Lord made good ? Jacob 
himself bears witness to the faithfulness of the promises. 
Twenty years afterwards he says, " The God of my 
fathers hath kept me." " That testimony," says an 
eminent modern preacher, " I have read with great joy." 
Later on Jacob declares, " I will make an altar unto God 
who answered me in the day of my distress and was with 
me in the way where I went." When, on his dying bed, 



The Promise. 75 

he blessed the two sons of Joseph the same testimony 
was repeated, " The God which fed me all my life long, 
the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the 
lads." 

This personal promise made to Jacob the Scriptures 
warrant us in applying to ourselves. The same promise 
was afterwards made to Joshua, to Solomon, to all Israel ; 
in the book of Isaiah it is repeated to the poor and 
needy; while in the last chapter of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews the Apostle takes up the words, " I will never 
leave thee nor forsake thee," and gives them in all their 
fulness of comfort and hope to every troubled Christian 
heart. Everywhere in the Word of God the promises are 
emphasized and repeated. Under a thousand vivid 
images and in the plainest words we are assured over and 
over again that the Lord is faithful. The remarkable 
emphasis placed upon the promises of Holy Scripture is 
an evidence that they are in danger of being neglected ; 
accordingly we find it to be a fact that the human heart is 
naturally distrustful of the promises of God. Neverthe- 
less, Revelation assures us that the promises are founded 
upon the attributes of God. His promises are made 
voluntarily. Can He ever be reluctant to fulfil them ? 
They were not given hastily or unadvisedly. No new 
circumstances can arise which are unforeseen, or which 
could on any account lead Him to wish to repeal them or 
to see that they should be repealed. He cannot be 
powerless to keep His word, for He is omnipotent. He 
can never promise beyond the limits of His power, be- 
yond the scope of the laws by which His providence is 
governed, for He knows all and He cannot forget. The 
Lord must be faithful; and He is. He cannot deny 
Himself. He is not a man that He should lie, nor the 



j6 The Bartered Birthright. 

son of man that He should repent. His goodness faileth 
never; and Christian experience in every age and race 
and clime corroborates our faith. Every day it is put to 
the test that God is a prayer-hearing and a promise-keep- 
ing God. Multitudes of living men and women, some, 
if not all of us here this day, can testify that the Lord is 
faithful. All such believe in what are called special 
providences ; but it is to be noticed that the promises of 
the text are equally fulfilled in the uneventful days. 
The young are usually eager for something to happen. 
As we advance in life, however, we gain the clearest and 
sweetest evidence of promises kept in the season when 
nothing happens. To awake after refreshing sleep and to 
see the brightness of the sun, to remember that all be- 
neath our roof are well and happy, the children safe and 
in their places, no sickness, no harrowing cares, no sepa- 
rating ways, no crisis, no special anxiety for us or any of 
our own — on such mornings we should most devoutly 
acknowledge the blessed fulfilment of the old promise, 
" I will keep thee; I will be with thee; I will not leave 
thee," and exclaim, with all thankfulness and sincerity, 

" Oh, blest are uneventful days ; and blest are uneventful years ! " 

But it will be strange if some of us are not now meeting 
the eventful days. For those days will come. Some- 
times the believer's faith never wavers, carrying him 
safely through the period of changes and chances ; most 
of us though, as we must admit, are besieged by doubts 
when the trial comes upon us and are prone to distrust 
the promise of God. Either our sins create the doubt, 
or to try us God hides His face, or else we fully realize 
the strength of our carnal nature only when it rebels 
against the heavenly discipline — from one or all of these 



The Promise. yy 

causes distrust seizes upon us; we doubt whether we have 
ever truly given our hearts to God. Gustav Flaubert, 
assigned by the literary critics a foremost place among 
the great modern masters of style, once said of himself, 
at the summit of his power, " I am growing so peevish 
about my writing, I am like a man whose ear is true but 
who plays falsely upon the violin, — his fingers refuse to 
reproduce precisely those sounds of which he has the 
inward sense. Then the tears come rolling down from 
the poor scraper's eyes and the bow falls from his hand." 
Where is the Christian who has not sometimes felt a sim- 
ilar despair ? The great gap between the real and the 
ideal, both in faith and practice, tempts us to question 
our natural and sacramental endowment, even as the 
writer who cannot express his thought doubts his 
thought, or as the musician who cannot reproduce the 
sweet sounds within him doubts that inward sense and 
weeps over his doubt; just so the Christian who cannot 
live the life of Christ in bearing the Cross of Christ is 
sometimes tempted to doubt himself as well as the God 
above him. But Flaubert never gave up, and won suc- 
cess. And the Christian who holds fast to the promises 
in the day of darkness will see them fulfilled in the light. 
For the Lord is faithful. He will not suffer us to be 
tempted above that we are able ; neither should we for- 
get that the goodness and faithfulness of God in keeping 
His word is, as Bishop Butler has most profoundly ob- 
served, " a truth full of terror for the wicked. Malice," 
he says, " may be wearied or satiated. Caprice may 
change ; but goodness is a steady, inflexible principle of 
action." 

I am with thee; I will keep thee; I will not leave 
thee." This was the promise which caused the desert of 



yS The Bartered Birthright. 

Jacob's hopelessness to rejoice and blossom as the rose. 
Let us make that promise our own. He who hath begun 
a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus 
Christ. Believing that, and looking unto Jesus the 
author and finisher of our faith, knowing that He is 
faithful who has promised, we will fight the good fight, 
thankful for every promise fulfilled in the past, hopeful 
in present discouragements, brave and cheerful under 
temporary defeat, staying ourselves for every experience 
of life, death, and that vast forever, on the sweet assur- 
ance which evermore comes down the ladder of Divine 
love: " I am with thee; I will keep thee; I will not 
leave thee." 



THE AWAKENING. 

THURSDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in 
this place ; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dread- 
ful is this place ! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the 
gate of heaven." — Gen. xxviii. 16, 17. 

DREAMS," says Charles Dickens, " are the bright 
creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth 
in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of 
the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their 
daily pilgrimage through the world." But Jacob's dream 
did not fade away. When he awoke the hard, cold light 
of early morning was uncovering the distant heights, the 
rock-strewn fields, and the wild brier of the wilderness ; 
faded was the heavenly stairway, and faded the ascend- 
ing and descending host, and faded the vision and the 
voice of God; but the memory of it, the touch Divine 
upon his soul remained. His first feeling is one of holy 
fear. ;< How dreadful is this place! The Lord is in this 
place and I knew it not." There is nothing in these 
words to warrant the conjecture that hitherto Jacob had 
thought of God as a local deity, confined to his father's 
habitation, and that his exclamation is an utterance of 
astonishment at the discovery that God was here and 
might be found anywhere. Jacob always knew that God 
was omnipresent. His words mean simply that that feel- 
ing was strong upon him which humanity has ever felt 
when it is brought near to the Creator and to the world un- 

79 



80 The Bartered Birthright. 

seen. The creature, since Adam's sin, and because of it, 
instinctively hides itself, as Adam did, from the approach 
of the Creator. And so the hill-top upon which he had 
slept seemed holy ground and a hushed awe fell upon 
Jacob. The reverence and godly fear of which the 
Apostle speaks filled his heart. 

To-day, therefore, reverence shall be our theme. It 
will scarcely be denied that this is an irreverent age, or 
that we are an irreverent people. The subject may be 
an unwelcome one, but it is timely, and the duty of 
preaching upon it is imperative. 

Now, what is reverence ? In the text we see a fellow- 
man in a reverential mood, a sight better than the defini- 
tions which are not altogether satisfactory. We are told 
that reverence is a word by itself and that it has no syn- 
onym. It is not respect or fear or honor; awe is the 
nearest word; and yet it is more than awe. Dean 
Vaughan has well said, " We feel reverence only for the 
sacred — for that which is, or has touched, the Divine." 
Now the feeling to which Jacob gave expression on 
awakening will have, of course, its ebbs and flows. No 
attitude of the mind or heart is free from this law of 
change. But if we truly and rightly believe in God we 
must maintain a real reverence towards Him. If there 
is One in whom we live and move and are; to whom 
our hearts, our minds, and our consciences are an open 
book; upon whom we are absolutely dependent for all 
we have and love and hope for; who made us and not 
we ourselves — -what innermost thought can we have of 
Him save this: Holy and Reverend is His name! Any 
serious consideration of the person and attributes of 
God, as revealed by Christianity, must force from us the 
prayer, ' ' Hallowed be Thy name. ' ' Nevertheless, as we 



The Awakening. 81 

look about us, we find that it is not so. Irreverence 
toward God may be charged against three classes of 
people. 

There are those who openly scorn to pay Him rever- 
ence; who never bow the knee to Him, nor honor His 
holy name or His Word ; who daily, even hourly, blas- 
pheme Him, in heedlessness or in anger; who, when 
reminded of the pledge, " I will not hold him guiltless 
that taketh My name in vain," deny His power to reach 
them, or rashly proclaim their willingness to take the 
consequences — men who thus write themselves down in 
the lists of those " Who ne'er have tasted grace, nor 
goodness ever felt." 

And many sin in this way who nevertheless profess and 
call themselves Christians. I do not refer to those who 
look upon our Lord merely as a great human teacher; 
or who, in other respects, are in error as to the nature 
and person of God. No doubt such are failing to give 
the homage which is due to Him. I speak, rather, of 
those about us who belong to what are known as the 
orthodox denominations. They are good people ; they 
mean no harm ; but they are so rude and free and familiar 
in their religion that it is impossible to approve of their 
ways. In order to escape even the suspicion of unfair- 
ness I will give the words of one of their own ministers. 
He had lived abroad for eight years, and upon his return 
published an article (Homiletical Review, Dec, 1888, 
page 546), from which the following sentences are taken : 
" A positively painful impression, upon coming home to 
America, was made by the lack of reverence during 
divine service. The behavior of the congregation, the 
bearing of the preacher, the sermon, the announcements, 
too often put divine services on the level of an entertain- 

6 



82 The Bartered Birthright. 

ment. Sometimes the entertaining feature is not only 
apparent, but actually announced as a special aim. As 
a consequence, the levity found in certain congregations 
ought not perhaps to be a surprise, however shocking it 
may be. When a minister descends to the sensational, 
the vulgar, the laughable, as the chief means of attract- 
ing an audience, we naturally wonder why he is in the 
pulpit. With such preaching astonishment ceases that 
the congregation lacks solemnity, is ready for a laugh, 
and can enter and leave the house of God without a 
thought or an act of worship." To this we may add 
that irreverence towards God is more than a question of 
taste, is more than bad manners; it is, wherever it is 
manifested by Christians, a serious hindrance to the 
progress of religion and a sin against the holiness of the 
Almighty. 

Once more, we may treat God with irreverence by 
banishing Him from our thoughts, by neglecting to pray 
to Him, by rebelling against His will. 

Take another thought. Our churches are holy. We 
should demean ourselves with reverence in the house of 
the Lord. Jacob turned his hill-top into a sanctuary and 
said, " This is none other but the house of God." Our 
blessed Saviour rebuked irreverence in the temple and 
He loved its courts. To teach us reverence our churches 
are designed to be and to seem unlike other structures. 
When we enter them we are in the shrine of an un- 
seen presence, a meeting place between God and man. 
And the worship of our sanctuaries is profoundly rever- 
ent. No failure in this respect can be charged against 
the Book of Common Prayer. Of those outside our 
privileges it may be said that they do not know how to 
behave themselves when assembled for public worship, 



The Awakening. 83 

but for Church people there is no such excuse. If we 
are not all on our knees, soberly and devoutly and 
audibly participating in the prayers, in each and every 
act and order of our worship, taking our part, endeavor- 
ing to banish all worldly thoughts, we are sinning against 
light and love, calling down upon ourselves a curse and 
not a blessing. Neither must we forget the power of 
example. The young, and all others, in fact, learn 
reverence by example rather than by precept. The de- 
vout example of one good man or woman is worth many 
sermons upon this duty. And with reverence for the 
house of God we shall grow to love His dwelling-place 
and its worship and be able to say with the Psalmist, 
" Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house and 
the place where Thine honor dwelleth." 

We must also notice that Holy Scripture couples to- 
gether reverence for the Lord's house and the Lord's Day. 
' Ye shall keep My sabbaths and reverence My sanctu- 
ary; I am the Lord." Here again, example is powerful. 
And so reverence, like the other religious sentiments, 
while it begins with God, descends to all the relations of 
life. Accordingly we are told, " Ye shall fear every man 
his father and his mother; " and again, " Thou shalt rise 
up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old 
man and fear thy God." The wife, too, is taught to 
reverence her husband and the husband to love his wife. 
Says Ruskin: " Reverence is due to what is pure and 
bright in your own youth ; to what is true and tried in 
the age of others; to all that is gracious among the living, 
great among the dead, and marvellous in the powers that 
can never die." If reverence in these respects dies out 
we shall be far on the road to materialism. And so the 
"great moral poet" sets forth reverence as the "angel 



84 The Bartered Birthright. 

of the world/' If we believe all this, if we realize that 
irreverence is in the daily air, that its logical and inevit- 
able consequence is the certain destruction of the best 
ideals of mankind, if we must confess that 

" in ports 
Of levity no refuge can be found, 
No shelter for a spirit in distress," 

then let us resolve to pray for the spirit of reverence, and 
diligently strive to be reverent before God, reverent in 
our sanctuaries, reverent in our homes, reverent in our 
attitude towards all that is pure and sacred; for God, 
who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of 
sinful men, may be said to have forsaken us when we 
cease to respect the reverences, human and Divine. 



THE VOW. 

FRIDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep 
me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put 
on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace ; then shall the Lord 
be my God." — Gen. xxviii. 20, 21. 

WHEN Jacob awoke he felt that he was on holy 
ground. While the reverential mood was still 
upon him he uttered the vow of the text. Such vows 
are as ancient as the race; and to this day some instinct 
of the human heart prompts men of every religion to 
take upon themselves similar sacred engagements. 

1. What, then, was the significance of Jacob's vow ? 
First of all we must notice what it was not. How often 
have we heard it said that Jacob is here driving a bargain 
with his Maker, that he is shrewdly defining his terms 
and conditions, and selling his worship for an equivalent, 
that in his vow we see clear indications of that commer- 
cial adroitness which has ever distinguished the nation 
whose founder Jacob was. A careless reading of our 
English version, without due consideration of the con- 
text, might give some sanction to this mistaken interpre- 
tation, " If God will be with me, and keep me, and feed 
me, then shall the Lord be my God." The Hebrew, 
however, as the authorities, both ancient and modern, 
assure us, warrants no such construction. The word 
rendered " if" is equivalent to " inasmuch " or " since." 
11 Since God is going to be with me, and to keep me, and 

85 



86 The Bartered Birthright. 

give me all I need, and bring me back to my father's 
house in peace; since He has promised all this, and will 
assuredly perform it, I, for my part, pledge myself that 
He, and He alone, shall be my God, shall have my 
obedience, my worship, my trust, my adoration, and my 
love." If this utterance falls below the measure of that 
faith which enabled Job to say, " Though He slay me 
yet will I trust in Him," Jacob was nevertheless perfectly 
sincere, and his vision left a real and lasting impression 
upon his soul, an impression which finds its honest ex- 
pression in the words of his vow. 

2. This leads on to some consideration of the fact that 
we too are under vows. Is there one of us who cannot 
say with the Psalmist, " Thy vows are upon me, O 
God ? " In Holy Baptism we pledged ourselves to re- 
nounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, to believe all 
the articles of the Christian Creed, and obediently to 
keep God's holy will and commandments. In Con- 
firmation we voluntarily renewed these solemn vows and 
promises in the presence of all the people and knelt at 
the Apostle's feet for the gift of the Holy Spirit which 
should enable us so to do. In the Sacrament of the 
Altar we, from time to time, renew all these vows and 
pledge ourselves upon the Body and Blood of the Lord 
to continued faithfulness and loyalty. The very word 
sacrament, originally signifying a soldier's oath of allegi- 
ance to his leader, reminds us that in these holy rites we 
have pledged our word and honor to be loyal to our 
leader, the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. These vows 
are taken and imposed by sure and certain warrants of 
Holy Scriptures; they cover all we have and are; and 
our eternal future depends upon the earnestness of our 
efforts to keep these vows. 



The Vow. 87 

The Church also gives an Ordination and a Marriage 
vow. These vows are not demanded of all, nor of any, 
are entirely voluntary, and imposed only upon those who 
think they have vocation for these states of life. It is 
sometimes said that the Ordination vow is held to-day 
with less sincerity than in former years — a very grave 
charge which every clergyman is ready to disclaim for the 
great majority of his faithful brethren, while in his heart 
he fears for himself, and beseeches the people's prayers, 
lest having preached to others he himself become a cast- 
away. But we must admit, with shame and sorrow, that 
on every hand the Marriage vow is assumed lightly and 
unadvisedly and as lightly broken, even by those who 
know its sacredness. This deadly evil is growing rapidly 
and threatens our homes and our altars. 

The Church has also, in all ages, encouraged her laity 
to take upon themselves vows of special devotion to her 
work and worship. Brotherhoods, sisterhoods, guilds, 
and an order of deaconesses exist, do noble and loyal 
work and need recruits. At present there seems to be 
an urgent need for more such women workers ; and it 
must be that in many of our parishes there are young 
women who have generous gifts for such a blessed work ; 
who, perhaps, need only a word of encouragement to 
lead them to enter upon it. 

3. The human heart, however, has never seemed satis- 
fied without vows beyond those already mentioned, vows 
made when some crisis is at hand. And most of those 
vows are neither wise nor righteous. For example, a vow 
may promise that which is in itself sinful, as when the 
conspirators among the Jews " bound themselves under 
a curse that they would neither eat nor drink until they 
had killed Paul." To all such " hot and peevish vows " 



88 The Bartered Birthright. 

not only are " the gods deaf/' but against them is kindled 
the wrath of the God of all gods. Or, a vow may be free 
from sin and yet stupid and senseless, as when a man 
binds himself not to cut his hair or beard until a certain 
politician is elected President of the United States. Or, 
a vow may be religious and yet foolish, as when a Christ- 
ian undertakes that which is impossible ; never again, for 
instance, to have a wicked thought. Such " mouth- 
made vows which break themselves " in vowing are vain 
and empty, and probably impertinent. But perhaps the 
most common form of a wrong vow is the one with which 
Jacob has been unjustly charged; when men, consciously 
or unconsciously, try to bargain with God, engaging to 
do something to compensate for past sins or negligences, 
offering to give Him something or to do something for 
Him if He will give them in return their heart's desire. 
" If God will spare my child's life," we say, " I will pro- 
mise to attend Church every Sunday and become a regular 
communicant ; if God will save me from this disgrace, or 
ward off this business failure, or this personal humilia- 
tion; if God will give me this or that blessing; then I, 
for my part, will promise to give or do this or that for 
Him." The Saxon Priest of Odin, when he listened to 
the Christian missionary, Paulinus, gave expression to 
the same thought, exclaiming: " The old gods have 
profited me little ; these long years have I served them, 
no man more diligently, and yet many are richer and 
more prosperous than I am. I will try the new." We 
are told that in Mexico a gambler will sometimes place a 
picture of the Virgin on the table, vowing to her so many 
candles or dollars if she will win for him ; and, if he loses, 
will sometimes, in a burst of rage, draw his knife and 
hack in pieces the picture of his divinity. We smile and 



The Vow. 89 

sigh complacently over such miserable Christianity as 
this; and yet, in a subtler form we often yield to this 
same error. Even Abraham Lincoln was thus ensnared. 
Before a certain battle Mr. Lincoln vowed that if the 
Confederates were defeated he would emancipate the 
slaves. And into such vows as this the best of us may 
be beguiled. Now, how and why was Lincoln's vow 
wrong ? Because it was not a true vow but an offered 
bargain. If after he had prayed and fought, God had 
answered and helped and given him victory, then he 
might have righteously vowed his vow, "Since God has 
helped me to defeat the foe I will free the slaves." 

" And when thou vowest a vow," says the Scripture, 
"defer not to pay it; for He hath no pleasure in 
fools; pay that thou hast vowed." But we all know 
how thankfulness for answered prayer soon fades and that 
convalescents have short memories. It will be strange if 
many of us are not under true and binding vows made in 
the past for answered prayers. Let us pay our vows and 
cherish our gratitude. Ingratitude is base. Furthermore, 
our word was pledged. We take pride in being as good 
as our word. A promise to a fellow-mortal we regard as 
sacred. And is God less than mortal man ? Can we 
break our word to Him without dishonor ? And you 
have given Him your word of honor. At a time when 
your heart overflowed with gratitude or was aflame with 
love you vowed, " Now shall the Lord be my God." 
Do you remember, while you listen, some such vow of 
the past ? Consider, then, that the merciful Lord who 
heard your vow grieves over your neglect and dis- 
honor; and, it may be, is sending this present message 
to your soul in order to shame you back to your honor 
and win His wandering child to His heart once more. 



9<3 The Bartered Birthright. 

If you heed not His message of love, by and by, but 
still in love, He will make you feel the weight of His rod. 



THE ALTAR. 

SATURDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" This stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house." — Gen. 
xxviii. 22. 

THOSE who have seen Rubens's great picture of 
Jacob's Ladder-vision in Antwerp Cathedral will 
never forget the ideal beauty of the young patriarch's 
face. The painting is a blaze of glorious light. The 
stone pillow shines like a lamp of gold in the radiance. 
The ladder and the angels are marvels in design and 
execution. But in the rapture of the sleeper's face the 
genius of the painter has its chief expression. Think, 
then, of the look on Jacob's face when he awoke. What 
painter could reproduce the countenance of one whose 
soul was filled with awe, gratitude, and faith, the counten- 
ance of a true worshipper ? 

Yesterday we considered the vow which now passed 
Jacob's lips; since God has promised to be with him and 
keep him and never leave him, Jacob is resolved that the 
Lord shall be his God. The narrative to-day brings be- 
fore us three particulars in connection with his act of 
worship on awakening from his dream. 

i. First, he " took the stone that he had put for his 
pillow and set it up for a pillar and poured oil upon it." 
This oil, in a small skin bag, he may have carried as a 
medicine, or possibly for food in some necessity. We 
know that he left his father's dwelling with only the 
scantiest provision for his journey. In later times the 

91 



92 The Bartered Birthright. 

prophets, in order to rebuke the proud and haughty 
spirit of the Jews, reminded them that " a Syrian ready 
to perish was their father ;" while Jacob himself tells us 
that when he crossed the Jordan the staff he brought 
from home was his sole earthly possession. And yet, 
although his present provision for making an external act 
of worship was very meagre, he had no thought of defer- 
ring his devotions to a more convenient season. He 
would consecrate himself to the service of God now, 
while the impulse to do so was strong upon him. Though 
he had no sacrificial victim to offer, he reverently made 
use of such symbols as he could command and worship- 
ped God in spirit and in truth. He set up for an altar 
the stone which had been his pillow while he dreamed. 
It may have been a meteoric stone bearing outward evi- 
dences of its heavenly origin. It may have been the 
Stone of Scone now under the Coronation Chair in the 
Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor in Westminster 
Abbey. The stone which had been his pillow Jacob 
turned into an altar. He would commemorate the 
Divine communication and remind others who should see 
it that God had visited this spot. And whenever Jacob 
met with a special revelation or dispensation of the good 
providence of God he set up a stone as a memorial. 
" Blessed, thrice blessed is the man, to whom life is," 
as it was to Jacob, " dotted over with memorials of com- 
munion with God." What those rude altars of old did 
for the patriarch, memory does for us. "I too," says a 
holy man, " remember with gratitude the places where I 
have found God near, the saints by whom He has spoken 
to me, the occasions of comfort and peace which He has 
sent; as long as memory lasts, I would preserve these 
with gratitude." 



The Altar. 93 

2. Again, Jacob " called the name of that place Bethel ; 
but the name of that city was called Luz at the first." 
Luz means an almond tree; Bethel, the house of God. 
Afterwards, perhaps with reference to this event, in the 
temple, the branches of the golden candle-stick, a figure 
of the Church, were to have knobs of almonds, and the 
sacerdotal rod of Aaron budded with almonds. So when- 
ever doubt is turned into faith, repentance into forgive- 
ness, Luz becomes Bethel, and the grove of almonds is 
transformed into the house of God. 

It was a good instinct which led Jacob to seek to per- 
petuate the sacred impression of the moment. There is 
a spiritual value in the forms and ceremonies of religious 
worship; impressions and excited feelings are transient 
and will fade away unless they are turned into some fixed 
and permanent mould which shall give the spirit a form 
for its home. It is sometimes said that " religion is an 
inward thing, that it does not consist in church-going, 
keeping the Lord's Day, public worship, sacraments, and 
so forth, but is only a state of the spirit." And yet we 
all know that if we neglect these outward observances 
our religion withers and dies. Human nature requires 
the aid of these external reminders of the great facts and 
duties of Christianity. The Holy Communion alone is a 
monument which keeps forever before the eyes and ears 
of the faithful the leading events in the life of our blessed 
Saviour, while His Body and His Blood, given and re- 
ceived, sustain and strengthen the spirit of the wor- 
shipper. 

Jacob said/ ' This pillar shall be God's house. ' ' St. Paul 
interprets and applies these words to the Church of Christ, 
which he calls "Bethel, the house of God," "the Church 
of the living God; the pillar and ground of the truth." 



94 The Bartered Birthright. 

3. But there is something more. Jacob is resolved to 
honor God with his substance — " Of all that Thou give 
me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee." The in- 
stinctive feeling that an altar demands an offering is ap- 
proved by many passages of Holy Scripture. But the 
feeling comes of itself. " O ye Corinthians," says the 
Apostle, " our heart is enlarged." That is an experience 
which repeats itself every time the heart is opened to 
God. Expansion and expression is a law of spiritual 
growth. The Dead Sea is dead because it has no outlet. 
It is always receiving and never giving. Nevertheless 
the failure of Christians generally to fulfil the reasonable 
requirements of God in offerings and gifts and sacrifices 
is a deplorable fact. Under the changed conditions of 
modern society the precise proportion named by Jacob 
may not be, in all cases, the Christian requirement. In 
some instances we are told that it is impossible ; in many 
others it would be too easy a demand, for to many the 
tenth of the income would mean no sacrifice at all. For 
most of us it would undoubtedly be a wise rule to make 
the tenth the standard of our giving, with the conviction 
that that proportion is our just due and that all we give 
in addition thereto may be regarded as a free-will offer- 
ing. Do we not know that all we have is derived from 
God ? Is He not the giver of every good and perfect 
gift ? " Both riches and honor come of Thee, O Lord." 
The very coins we handle have stamped upon their face, 
" In God we trust." Furthermore, our lives also are in 
His hands. " He giveth life and health to all things." 
How are we recognizing and meeting these obligations ? 
Are none of us generous, nay, extravagant, towards self, 
niggardly towards God ? Are there not communicants 
who pay more for a single article of personal adornment 



The Altar. 95 

or apparel than they pay for their pew, more than they 
ever give to missions ? The Scriptures abound in warn- 
ings against the perversion of God's gifts. " Take heed 
and beware of covetousness." " If riches increase set 
not your heart upon them." ' Ye cannot serve God 
and mammon." ' They that will be rich fall into temp- 
tation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful 
lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition." 
1 Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them 
shall eat your flesh as it were fire." " Charge them that 
are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor 
trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who 
giveth us all things richly to enjoy ; that they do good, 
that they be rich in good works, ready to give and glad 
to distribute." From such passages as these it appears 
that even if our offerings were not needed for the altar of 
Christ, the necessity of giving as an antidote for selfish- 
ness would still remain. In His mercy God has placed in 
our hands the medicine which alone can heal that deadly 
disease of greed. And so, if the love of money is the 
root of all evil, the right use of it in God's sight is a 
source of virtue and joy and peace. 

To encourage Christian beneficence Holy Scripture, 
therefore, gives precious promises of temporal care and 
spiritual prosperity to the liberal giver. " Trust in the 
Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and 
verily thou shalt be fed." " Honor the Lord with thy 
substance and with the first-fruits of all thine increase ; so 
shalt thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses 
shall burst out with new wine." " The liberal man de- 
viseth liberal things and by liberal things shall he stand. 
The liberal soul shall be made fat." " To do good and 
to distribute forget not ; for with such sacrifices God is 



96 The Bartered Birthright. 

well pleased." " Bring ye all the tithes into the store- 
house and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of 
Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and 
pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room 
enough to receive it." 

When Jacob ended his act of worship he departed, 
or literally, as it is in the margin of our Bible, " When 
Jacob lifted up his feet." His feet were light, for joy 
was in his heart. He had the assurance for which our 
Collect prays that he would be defended from all adversi- 
ties which might happen to the body and from all evil 
thoughts which might assault and hurt the soul. At the 
Christian altar we too may lay down our burdens and go 
on our way rejoicing. 



SERVING FOR RACHEL. 

MONDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And Jacob loved Rachel ; and said, I will serve thee seven years for 
Rachel thy younger daughter. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel ; 
and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her." — 
Gen. xxix. 18, 20. 

IN this chapter we see Jacob preserved from Esau's 
anger, escaping from the perils of his long journey, 
and safe at last in the home of Laban his mother's 
brother. And here he finds Rachel. The God who met 
him on the way and opened heaven to his wondering 
gaze has been with him and kept him as He promised. 

Now when we recall the circumstances which led to 
Jacob's exile from the Holy Land one fact stands out 
with significant distinctness. It is the providence by 
which God saved him from the murderous revenge of his 
brother. Esau said in his heart, " I will slay my 
brother! " For years Esau has despised spiritual things, 
living for self and the senses only. Gradually he has de- 
teriorated. For, 

" Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! " 

Now he has become wicked enough to desire the life of 
the playmate of his earliest years, his only brother. Yet 
there is one tender memory in his heart and that restrains 
his hand ; he thinks of the blind old man reclining in 
yonder tent, so near his earthly end, and he shrinks from 

97 



98 The Bartered Birthright. 

grieving his father by this deed of blood. So he puts off 
his purpose. ' ' I will wait, " he says, ' ' till my father dies in 
peace; then vengeance shall be mine." But that delay 
saved Jacob's life. It is often so with us. How many 
evil intentions fall to the ground like unripened buds in a 
heavy gale! How many evil deeds that men design, 
which would fill the world with horror and despair, never 
find accomplishment ! The would-be murderer creeps to 
the side of the sleeper's bed, lifts his hand to strike the 
blow of death, when something in that calm face reminds 
him of his own mother as she lay dead, and he creeps 
hastily away with the fear of the unseen upon him ; and 
the victim lives out his years. We cannot measure or 
imagine what the world is saved of misery by this opera- 
tion of what is naturally good in us upon what is naturally 
bad. We may call it the restraint of our better selves 
upon our evil selves. It is true that the wide continents 
are already filled with the woe which follows in the wake 
of sin ; but what would the world be if, added to all this 
evil, there were the vast and incalculable number of 
crimes which men intended to carry out but are somehow 
restrained from ; if, in a word, the evil designs of all hu- 
man hearts could grow into deeds ? 

The proverb that there is " a soft spot " in every heart 
is founded upon fact. Esau loved his father, and that 
tenderness in his wild nature delayed and finally defeated 
his purpose. But if Jacob escaped death he was not to 
escape the penalty of that wrong which angered Esau. 
His punishment began at once in his banishment from 
home and lasted until guile was beaten down within his 
soul. 

His long journey at length draws near its end. One 
morning Jacob reaches a well where are some shepherds 



Serving for Rachel. 99 

with their sheep. The traveller at once begins to question 
them. An old commentator remarks that no one need 
be above asking questions and that often our failure to 
ask them leaves us ignorant of much interesting and im- 
portant information. He learns from these men that his 
uncle lives in the neighborhood, a leading citizen, and 
that, according to their custom, they are waiting till all 
the flocks are gathered together before they open the 
well. " And here," exclaims one of them, " comes 
Rachel, Laban's daughter, with the sheep." 

As soon as Jacob sees his beautiful cousin drawing near, 
possibly for the purpose of attracting her favorable atten- 
tion, at least with the desire of rendering her a service of 
gallantry, he takes upon himself the task of several men, 
and putting forth all his manly strength, rolls the " great 
stone " away from the well's mouth and gives water to 
Rachel's flock. Then he makes himself known, embraces 
Rachel, and weeps for joy. 

In passing notice how, in this turning-point of his life, 
Jacob's character as a shepherd appears. No sooner did 
he see the thirsty sheep gathered about the unopened 
well than he longed to have them watered and led out to 
the green pastures. All his life long he kept and cared 
for the sheep ; and in this respect, as in many others, he 
pointed forward to that Redeemer who was the Good 
Shepherd of mankind. 

In Laban's home Jacob remained for a month as a 
visitor. His uncle soon discovered that his youthful 
kinsman possessed a thorough mastery of the shepherd's 
calling, and he was eager to secure his services for a term 
of years. In what follows, a true Eastern pastoral, un- 
surpassed in beauty and pathos by the later classics, we 
shall want to hear once more the charming words of the 

L.ofC. 



ioo The Bartered Birthright. 

old narrative itself: " And Laban said unto Jacob, Be- 
cause thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve 
me for nought ? tell me, what shall thy wages be ? And 
Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, 
and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was ten- 
der eyed ; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. And 
Jacob loved Rachel ; and said, I will serve thee seven 
years for Rachel thy younger daughter. And Laban 
said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I 
should give her to another man : abide with me. And 
Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed 
unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her." 

Laban's proposition opened the way for Jacob to de- 
clare his love; and, as he had no dower to offer, he 
eagerly grasped the opportunity to propose for her this 
long term of personal service. And these years, we are 
told, seemed short because of his great love. There are 
other human passions, — hate, avarice, fear, ambition, — 
which have held men constant to long, laborious tasks, 
but love alone could make the time seem short. It is 
easy to believe that these seven years while the child 
Rachel became a woman were the happiest days of Jacob's 
chequered life. Every reader sees clearly that his con- 
stant love for Rachel is one of the marked things in his 
career. That love never wavered, and her name was on 
his dying lips. Coleridge has said, " No man could be 
a bad man who loved as Jacob loved Rachel." The say- 
ing may be true; but we shall quite miss the meaning of 
his life if we admit that there can be any question of 
his " goodness." He was accepted of God. He was a 
spiritual man. His history is the story of the conflict 
between his higher and his lower natures and the slow 
but final victory of the spirit over the flesh. 



Serving for Rachel. 101 

We are to see, therefore, in the great disappointment 
of his affections not only a merited punishment but also 
a Divine discipline. How often does the old saying 
come true that God pays us in our own coin! So in the 
present instance we see the deceiver deceived and the 
cheat cheated. When the seven years' service ended 
the marriage feast was prepared. Then the heartless 
Laban took his weak-eyed elder daughter, and disguising 
her beneath the ample veil which custom demanded for 
a bride, substituted her for her younger sister Rachel. 
When Jacob discovered the fraud he did not repudiate 
the marriage. He submitted with what Martin Luther 
calls " superhuman patience." With a breaking heart 
he acknowledged to himself that the measure he had 
meted out to others was now meted to him again — that 
in this thing God was seeking to make all trickery and 
guile odious to him forever. What Rachel said and 
thought is not recorded. When Laban saw that Jacob 
was ready to sacrifice his love and the labor of years to the 
claims of religion, this avaricious and unfatherly father 
proposed that he should also marry Rachel and serve him 
yet seven other years for her. Polygamy, while not un- 
usual or unlawful, was virtually forced upon Jacob. It 
speaks much for him that he did not himself propose or 
demand a second marriage. And so Jacob continued to 
serve for Rachel for seven additional years. 

This discipline was good for Jacob's soul. By this 
means the doubleness, indirection, prevarication, natu- 
rally so strong in him, was beaten down and kept 
under. 

Let us too submit thankfully to the chastisement of 
the Lord. If we have made the great choice, all that is 
laid on us is designed to make us loathe our sins, to lift 



102 The Bartered Birthright. 

up our hearts, and to guide our feet into the paths of 
righteousness and peace. As has been said: "God de- 
lights to see grace in us at all times; but He loves not to 
see it latent. He desires it to be in exercise. And in 
order to bring it into exercise He uses the instrumentality 
of suffering. The leaves of the aromatic plant shed but 
a faint odor, as they wave in the air. The gold shines 
scarcely at all as it lies hid in the ore. The rugged crust 
of the pebble conceals from the eye its interior beauty. 
But let the aromatic leaf be crushed ; let the ore be sub- 
mitted to the furnace ; let the pebble be cut and polished; 
and the fragrance, the splendor, the fair colors are then 
brought out : " — 

" This leaf ? This stone ? It is thy heart : 
It must be crushed by pain and smart, 
It must be cleansed by sorrow's art — 
Ere it will yield a fragrance sweet, 
Ere it will shine, a jewel meet 
To lay before thy dear Lord's feet." 



THE RETURN. 

TUESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where 
thou vowedst a vow unto me ; now arise, get thee out from this land, and 
return unto the land of thy kindred." — Gen. xxxi. 13. 

IN the story of the fourteen years of Jacob's service for 
Rachel there is nothing set down to his discredit. 
To Laban, his father-in-law, he was a faithful servant. 
He served God, too, with all his heart. His untiring 
industry, his intelligent supervision of every detail of his 
work, his masterful yet kindly rule over his keepers and 
dependants, his gifts of management and organization, 
and his keen daily oversight of all his business, speedily 
won its reward, and the flocks under his care throve and 
multiplied. Laban's chief shepherd in a few years made 
his master a rich man. As the seasons passed the vision 
at Bethel was ever with him, his occupation was congenial 
and arduous, his children grew up under his own eye, the 
constant example of his tricky father-in-law helped to 
make guile, his besetting sin, odious; while the childless- 
ness of his beloved Rachel was, perhaps, the only shadow 
over these toilsome yet healthful and blessed years. 

It is true that the polygamy which was almost forced 
upon him produced its inevitable harvest of jealousies 
and heart-burnings. In that early age of the world, 
however, it was often the least of many evils, and in the 
present instance seems to have been tolerated, even ap- 
proved of God, who brought good out of the evil. The 

103 



104 The Bartered Birthright. 

early Christian fathers, who were almost contemporary 
with the Apostles, dwell at length upon the spiritual and 
mystical meaning of this portion of the patriarch's life. 
According to these holy men of old, Jacob, the son 
blessed of his father, who became a pilgrim, an exile, a 
shepherd and a servant, for the sake of Rachel whom he 
loved, is a type of Jesus Christ. Rachel, whose name 
signifies a " sheep," represents the lost sheep Christ 
loved and suffered for that they might become a Church 
" Espoused to Himself in mystical wedlock, by His 
blessed Word and Sacraments," purchased with His own 
precious blood. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Ambrose 
saw also in Jacob's twelve sons, heads of the Twelve 
Tribes of Israel, born of different mothers, " a fore- 
shadowing that all spiritual Israelites derive their life 
from Christ. Jacob loved Rachel and his design was to 
have one, and only one, wife. So in Christ's will and 
desire, there is one Catholic Church, from the beginning 
to the end of the world. But all that is human is marred 
by blemishes and sullied by stains of sin. Still God's 
purposes are not overthrown ; Christ is the one author 
and giver of spiritual grace wheresoever it flows. Leah 
was clandestinely introduced into wedlock with Jacob. 
Rachel was not exempt from envy and jealousy; so the 
Church in this world has many spots and wrinkles of 
human infirmities. Separate congregations are conse- 
quences of her sin and barrenness. But wheresoever 
Christians are born, whether it be at Jerusalem or Sam- 
aria, whether it be in the unity of the Church, or in 
schismatical sects, all their spiritual life, all their spiritual 
grace, all their hopes of blessing from God, are derived 
from Him who became a physician, a servant and a 
shepherd for their sakes ; the true Jacob — the promised 



The Return. 105 

seed of Abraham, the ever blessed son, Jesus Christ." 
In such a winning way did the first Christian teachers 
combine sound Church doctrine with the charity and bal- 
ance learned from those who had seen Christ. 

When Joseph was born Jacob seems to have regarded 
him as the heir of promise. About this time, too, his sec- 
ond term of service came to an end. The way appeared 
open for his return with Joseph to the land of promise; 
and so he said to Laban, " Send me away, that I may go 
unto mine own place and to my country." Laban, 
alarmed at the prospect of losing the man whose skill 
had enriched him, at once acknowledges his obligations 
to Jacob, even owning that the Lord had blessed him for 
Jacob's sake, and offers to pay his nephew from that time 
forth his own price. " Appoint me thy wages," says 
Laban, " and I will give it." It is clear that the crafty 
old man had never read what was written behind the 
calm and patient eyes of his son-in-law. He said to him- 
self, "I have cheated and managed him for fourteen years ; 
it will be easy to keep him in my power." When Jacob, 
therefore, accepted the offer and proceeded to name his 
terms for another period of service, Laban with difficulty 
could restrain or conceal his greedy joy as he promptly 
closed the bargain. He had expected, as a matter of 
course, to get the advantage of his simple and pious rela- 
tive, but he scarcely had counted on doing it so speedily 
and entirely. And what was Jacob's proposition ? He 
agreed to serve a third seven years, not for payment in 
money, but on condition of receiving for his own all the 
spotted, speckled, brown, and ringstraked animals the 
flocks of Laban might produce; while, to begin with, 
Laban was to be permitted to remove to a place three 
miles away all animals which were not already pure white. 



106 The Bartered Birthright. 

The young man seemed determined to cheat himself. 
Evidently he had no head for business. Laban's prompt 
acceptance of the offer shows that he was an utterly 
avaricious and unscrupulous man. 

On the other hand, when we attempt to analyze Jacob's 
motives in proposing these terms we meet with consider- 
able difficulty. We know he was not the simple and 
unsophisticated youth he seemed to Laban. We must 
remember that he had a keen and strong mind. He had 
become, too, the most skilful shepherd in all the land. 
He put brains into his work. He knew what was going 
on. What, then, was the outcome of this bargain ? 
Jacob's flocks and herds increased almost miraculously, 
and he was soon a master and prosperous proprietor on 
his own account. Jacob himself tells us that God blessed 
him, gave him skill, and enriched him, and that the arti- 
fices he employed were revealed to him in a dream. But 
the commentators are not agreed upon this point. Some 
say, " He sets himself to secure the very wealth which 
God had promised to bestow upon him, by base and 
crooked means; " that " we might as soon sprinkle rose- 
water on a sewer as attempt to justify Jacob's morality ; " 
that he even " uses religious language to conceal his 
duplicity." On the contrary, the more conservative and 
accepted authorities assure us that " there was nothing 
fraudulent whatever in what Jacob did." The truth lies 
probably between these two extremes. Jacob knew he 
was dealing with a rogue, and the natural man in him, 
the crafty man, loving indirection and doubleness, and 
loving money, rose up to meet the cunning opposed to 
him. " It was diamond cut diamond." The Jacob- 
nature, subdued by the vision at Bethel, was not dead, 
and, in this congenial air, revived. We know not what 



The Return. 107 

inward battles he fought against selfishness and guile; 
we know only that each one of us has the same enemy, 
called self within, and that we must each plead to God 
with all our might : 

" God harden me against myself, 
This traitor with pathetic voice 
Which craves for ease, and rest, and joys ; 
Myself arch-traitor to myself, 

My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, 
My clog whatever road I go." 

At length Laban's sons became jealous of Jacob and 
accused him of dishonesty. Laban himself was suspicious 
and envious; and Jacob " beheld the countenance of 
Laban, and behold, it was not toward him as before." 
These troubles evidently led Jacob to his prayers and 
meditations, for soon he seemed to hear a voice speaking 
in his ear the words of the text: " I am the God of 
Bethel, where thou anointedst a pillar, and where thou 
vowedst a vow unto Me : arise, get thee out of this land, 
and return unto the land of thy kindred." And Jacob 
obeyed the call. 

Notice the significance of the expression, " I am the 
God of Bethel." He is reminded of the place where his 
heart was touched and where he made his vow. These 
words seemed to say to him, " I am the same Divine 
Friend who met you in your sins and forgave you ; I am 
the promise-keeping God ; I have not forsaken you ; I 
have kept you ; I am with you. I am the God of those 
early mercies ; I saved you then ; I have saved you many 
times since; what I have been to you is the pledge and 
assurance of what I will be to you. At Bethel also you 
vowed to be Mine, saying, The Lord shall be my God. 
Forget not that you are Mine." 



108 The Bartered Birthright. 

God speaks likewise to each one of us: "At the altar 
you too vowed before men and angels that you would 
love and serve Me to the end. Keep that vow. I will 
help you keep it, and save you in spite of yourself." 



THE PURSUIT. 

WEDNESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And Mizpah ; for he said, The Lord watch between me and thee, 
when we are absent one from another." — Gen. xxxi. 49. 

IN the twenty-first year of his exile Jacob is summoned 
to return to the land of promise. Fourteen of these 
years he served for Rachel and the time seemed short 
because of the great love wherewith he loved her. In 
the last seven years, free to gather the earthly goods his 
heart craved, he became a rich man. His flocks and 
herds increased so rapidly, almost miraculously, that 
Laban, his father-in-law, influenced by the accusations 
of his sons, brothers of Rachel and Leah, was jealous of 
Jacob's success and doubtful of his honesty: "And 
Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban that it was not 
toward him as before." We are told that Jacob not only 
noticed the changed demeanor of Laban but also that he 
" heard the words of Laban's sons. " Some report of the 
accusations these young men were making was brought 
to Jacob's ears. What others are saying of us — how few 
can hear that with indifference! How often has some 
such report determined our own course of action ! 

The discord about him, therefore, and the suspicions, 
joined, perhaps, to the pricking of conscience within, led 
Jacob to accept with prompt obedience the Divine sum- 
mons to depart and seek once more the land of his birth, 
the land of promise. As usual, however, he acts de- 
liberately. He makes his plans beforehand and is ready 

109 



no The Bartered Birthright. 

to take advantage of every favorable circumstance. So 
when his father-in-law gathered all his family and depen- 
dants for the annual sheep-shearing at a place three days' 
journey from Jacob's habitation he decided that the time 
for his flight was at hand. He placed his wives and chil- 
dren, eleven sons and one daughter, " upon camels, and 
carried away all his cattle and all his goods ; and stole 
away unawares to Laban the Syrian. So he fled with all 
that he had." He took all that belonged to him, but 
nothing more. Rachel, his wife, however, without her 
husband's knowledge, " had stolen the images that were 
her father's." Rachel's theft of these images or " tera- 
phim," as they are called in the margin of our Bible, 
shows that she had not entirely freed herself from the 
semi-idolatrous faith and practices in which she had been 
reared. Possibly she wished to prevent Laban from dis- 
covering by the aid of his gods the direction of Jacob's 
flight ; probably she wished to consult them herself should 
danger come upon the fugitives; perhaps, as has been 
conjectured, she coveted the silver or gold of which the 
gods were made. 

For ten days Jacob has continued his journey in safety. 
He has placed at least three hundred miles between him- 
self and Laban. He is nearing the borders of the Holy 
Land. Bethel, where twenty years ago the God of his 
fathers had spoken to his soul, is not far off. 

As he journeyed his thoughts would range over the 
gracious providences which had gone before and followed 
him through all the years. He would perceive that his 
growing riches were endangering his spiritual life; that 
he had been doing that foolish thing most of us have 
sometimes done, barring God out of his life with God's 
own gifts ; making his inward life like 



The Pursuit. 1 1 1 

" The pleached bower 
Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun 
Forbid the sun to enter." 



One other thought must have been often with Jacob 
on his way to meet the God of Bethel, the thought of his 
own personality. He knew that he was the same man 
who was once in Bethel long ago ; that he had preserved 
his identity, had retained his self-conscious memory. 
John Stuart Mill has truly said, " The mind might be 
regarded as a mere series of feelings . . . were it not 
for the memory." And so when Jacob remembered that 
twenty years previously he had seen the Ladder-vision at 
Bethel, in that recollection his keen intellect would note 
at least three things: first, the fact remembered; second, 
the mind which remembered the fact; and third, the 
certainty that the mind which remembered the fact was 
the same mind as that which experienced the fact. The 
permanence of his soul, or self, his abiding personality, 
would assert itself. He was the same man. But could 
that self be the body, or of the body ? No, for the 
body changes, and we have many bodies. Could it be 
the brain ? Even the materialists themselves confess the 
impossibility of storing up the contents of a human mem- 
ory, the record of all that has been seen, heard, felt, 
thought, and read, " in three pounds' weight of albumin- 
ous and fatty tissue." The mind, the soul, the self, uses 
the body as its instrument, but is itself living, never- 
dying, conscious and self-conscious and eternal. As he 
journeyed homeward Jacob thought of these things. 

In the meantime Laban is in hot pursuit of the fugitives. 
With a force of armed men, on swift dromedaries, carry- 
ing only necessities, on the tenth day he overtook Jacob's 



H2 The Bartered Birthright. 

slow-moving company in Gilead. Here, his prey securely 
snared, he encamped for needed rest. On the morrow 
he would wreak his vengeance and recover his stolen 
goods and his cattle. But that night the God of Jacob 
visited Laban in a dream, warning him that he must do 
his kinsman no harm ; an admonition which, with a 
strange mixture of faith and superstition, he feared to 
disregard. In the morning, when the two leaders met, 
Laban preferred his charges against Jacob, and demanded 
the restoration of his gods. He reminds his nephew that 
he is in his power and informs him that were it not for 
his dream he would not stand parleying but at once pro- 
ceed to right these wrongs. Jacob replies with his usual 
astuteness, passing lightly but frankly over the main 
charge. He acknowledges that he slipped away secretly ; 
but this, he says, was due to fear — he was afraid Laban 
would not let him go, or would compel him to leave his 
family and his goods behind him. Upon the accusation 
of the theft of the teraphim, however, in ignorance of 
Rachel's act, he waxes eloquent, denying the crime and 
boldly demanding a search. The search begins. Each 
tent is examined without result. At last the searchers 
reach Rachel's temporary dwelling, where, we are told, 
she had the images concealed beneath a camel's saddle. 
If little Joseph, playing about, had with sharp eyes dis- 
covered his mother's secret, he did not betray her. When 
the searchers entered, Rachel at once showed herself to 
be her father's daughter and no novice in craft, as, with- 
out the slightest manifestation of concern, she reclined 
upon the saddle and asked her father to excuse her from 
rising to receive him, as she was indisposed ; whereupon, 
after looking elsewhere about the tent in vain, Laban 
was compelled to acknowledge Jacob's innocence and to 



The Pursuit. 113 

take a milder tone. Then Jacob, with growing self- 
confidence, indignant at what he believed to be a trumped- 
up charge, " unpacks his heart in words " : And Jacob 
answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass ? 
what is my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after 
me ? Whereas thou hast searched all my stuff, what hast 
thou found ? " For " twenty years have I been with 
thee" keeping thy flock. " That which was torn of 
beasts I brought not unto thee " to escape payment for 
it ; ' * I bore the loss of it ; of my hand didst thou require it, 
whether stolen by day, or stolen by night. Thus I was; 
in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by 
night ; and my sleep departed from mine eyes. . . . 
Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and 
the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely thou hadst 
sent me away now empty. God hath seen mine affliction 
and the labor of my hands, and rebuked thee yester- 
night " in the dream. Laban could not deny the truth 
of this outburst of natural eloquence, and, softened per- 
haps by the sight of his children and grandchildren, 
agreed to let him go on condition that he should enter 
into a covenant to deal kindly with his wives and children 
and never return to Padan-aram to trouble him any more. 
So an altar was set up, each swore to the covenant by his 
God, and they called the place " Mizpah " — " The Lord 
watch between me and thee when we are absent one from 
another." 

To-day let us meditate upon the words in which Jacob 
describes his good care of Laban's sheep. " That which 
was torn of beasts I brought not to thee ; I bore the loss 
of it; of my hand didst thou require it." In the same 
way our Good Shepherd has made Himself answerable 
for us even when torn by the enemy. Jacob never 



ii4 The Bartered Birthright. 

wearied in " the day the drought consumed " him, re- 
minding us of Him who sat down at Jacob's well endur- 
ing thirst that He might give living water to one lost 
sheep there, rather than be served by taking the earthly 
water from her hand. M The frost " was thick upon me 
4 by night," says Jacob, " and my sleep departed from 
mine eyes; " and we think of Him who rose before the 
day to pray, and who, stripped and bleeding, shivered 
with the cold on the night of His passion. May that 
Good Shepherd evermore guard and bless and keep us all ! 



JACOB'S PRAYER. 

THURSDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand 
of Esau : for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother 
with the children." — Gen. xxxii. II. 

THE thirty-second chapter of Genesis is one of the 
great chapters in the life of the patriarch Jacob. 
It gives us Mahanaim, Jabbok, and Peniel, the angel 
host, the prayer by the fords, and the wrestling with the 
Nameless One in the night. Jacob's temporal as well as 
his spiritual history here begins anew. His prayer, from 
which the text is taken, is one of the most familiar and 
helpful passages in the Bible. To-day let us consider the 
events which preceded and called forth his prayer, and 
then hear the prayer itself. 

I. After an exile of twenty years Jacob is returning to 
the land of promise. He left home with nothing but 
his staff in his hand ; fourteen years he served for Rachel ; 
then he made a bargain with Laban, his father-in-law, to 
work for a certain portion of the profits; and in these 
last years he accumulated a fortune and " increased ex- 
ceedingly and had much cattle, and maidservants, and 
menservants, and camels and asses." But while he grew 
rich in worldly goods his spiritual life declined. His vis- 
ion at Bethel long years ago did not, as we see, make him 
perfect ; his conversion, the touch of God upon his soul, 
did not entirely exterminate the roots of evil within him. 
If it had he would not have been like one of us. 

115 



u6 The Bartered Birthright. 

At length God called him to arise and to return to his 
native land. In parting from his father-in-law, which he 
succeeded in doing with some difficulty and danger, 
Jacob left behind him a " magnified image of himself." 
In this man his own besetting sin of guile was ever before 
him in its most unlovely aspects, that he might learn to 
see all its baseness; and " the sight of his own faults writ 
large in the coarser texture of Laban's character " seems 
to have been a living lesson which was not set before him 
in vain. 

2. With his caravan Jacob pushed on to the southward, 
and not far from the borders of the Holy Land pitched 
his camp for a short but needed rest. Here in the night 
a vision of angels appeared to him, the same angels, no 
doubt, who visited him in his Ladder-dream ; and he said, 
" This is God's host, and he called the name of that 
place Mahanaim." Full of comfort and encouragement 
was this visitation, for it assured him that he was under 
the Divine protection, and that as he had just escaped 
from Laban so he would also be brought safely through 
the danger which threatened in his approaching meeting 
with his brother Esau. 

To meet angels on our way to our own land is symbol- 
ical of reaching degrees of holiness. It means that our 
virtues are revealing themselves to us; that growth in 
grace is realized in its ripening. There are seasons in the 
life of the believer when a discipline which has been going 
on in the soul for a greater or lesser length oi time bears 
fruit. We have been growing better and better and 
knew it not. We have been gaining strength and only 
felt our weakness. We have been in grief and sorrow 
and knew not that suddenly we were to find a light 
arising out of the darkness. Then in some hour of 



Jacob's Prayer. 117 

danger, when some Esau from out a long-forgotten past 
emerges, or some great difficulty seems about to over- 
whelm us, the power of good in the recent discipline of 
events gathers up its strength, and lo ! we behold in it 
an angel. It trembles into visibility. It takes on the 
smile of the morning. It points and beckons heaven- 
ward. It holds on high the shield of our defence. It 
sweeps the chilly earth with its warm and roseate wings. 
We are consoled; we are visited with comforts from 
above. We lift up our hearts and say, " This is God's 
host. In God will I rejoice ; yea in God's word will I com- 
fort me." We are continually growing better if we are 
religious; if we live lives of faith and prayer; if we dwell 
in Christ and Christ dwells in us ; if we daily endeavor our- 
selves to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. 
The discipline of a well-kept Lent may reveal itself thus 
to us in the near future, and growth in grace be realized 
in its ripening. 

3. As we go on with the story we see that a man who 
has learned to pray is equal to any emergency which can 
possibly arise. The messengers Jacob has sent forward 
return with the report that from the tents of Esau four 
hundred armed men are advancing. The crisis is upon 
him. The great sin of his youth, the sin of deceiving his 
father and cheating his brother, will not down ; it has 
dogged him all his life; and now Jacob must meet it 
face to face and vanquish or be vanquished. Notice that 
he does not lose his self-possession. When these evil 
tidings fall upon him his heart standeth fast. His keen 
mind at once recognizes the hopelessness either of retreat 
or of resistance, and so he calls upon his God. But he 
thinks and acts as well as prays. 

In the first place he sends his brother a message of 



n8 The Bartered Birthright. 

kindness and peace. Then he sends him valuable pre- 
sents, anticipating the wisdom of Solomon that " a man's 
gift maketh room for himself" and " pacifieth anger." 
Then he follows kindness with prudence, dividing his 
company into two bands, with the hope that if worse 
comes to worst one band at least in the darkness and 
confusion may escape the fury of the avenger. Having 
exhausted his own resources Jacob leaves the issue with 
God. In his behavior at this time he sets us an excellent 
example. This truly religious man is no fanatic. He 
prays, and his prayer is a perfect model of supplication; 
but he also thinks and acts. He does not imagine that 
prayer can take the place of prudence any more than 
that prudence can take the place of prayer. He gives no 
encouragement to those who in sickness reject physicians 
and medicine and rely upon faith alone. Notice, too, 
that he does not ask or expect God to deliver him by de- 
stroying Esau and his men ; he asks only for some pro- 
vidential stirring of better memories or better thoughts 
which may turn his brother from his evil purpose. And 
so in this story of Jacob's danger we find working together 
to a happy end kindness, prudence, and prayer. Let us 
mark the value of the three working together ; for if in 
all our difficulties, trials, and misunderstandings with 
others, we also exercise the three, we shall usually find a 
happy issue out of all. 

4. This leads on to the words of Jacob's prayer. A 
prayer, " the combined beauty and power, humility and 
boldness, brevity and comprehensiveness of which " has 
been universally recognized. " And Jacob said, O God 
of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the 
Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and 
to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee : I am not 



Jacob's Prayer. 119 

worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, 
which thou hast shewed unto Thy servant ; for with my 
staff I passed over this Jordan ; and now I am become 
two bands. Deliver me, I pray Thee, from the hand of 
my brother, from the hand of Esau : for I fear him, lest 
he will come and smite me, and the mother with the 
children. And Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, 
and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot 
be numbered for multitude." And Jacob's prayer was 
answered. God appeased Esau. The next morning 
when Esau awoke, lo! his purpose of revenge had van- 
ished. 

" Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver 
thee." These words stand verified by the experience of 
believers in every age and race and circumstance. Have 
we been taught the power of prevailing prayer ? Do we 
know from a blessed personal experience that we have a 
prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God ? Have we 
learned the lesson which holy men in all ages in nearly 
the same words have so urgently impressed upon us : 
that prayer is not conquering God's reluctance, but tak- 
ing hold upon God's willingness ? If we have made such 
blessed certainties our own, we may confidently meet 
all the changes and chances of this mortal life, resting 
upon the great facts of Revelation and experience to 
which Browning has testified in two lines, — 

" The work began when first your prayer was uttered, 
And God will finish what He has begun." 

It is true there are difficulties in prayer, that objections 
are made to prayer. But one of the best answers to all ob- 
jections is that the human heart must pray — cannot help 
praying; and that, therefore, that which is so spontaneous 



120 The Bartered Birthright. 

and truly natural is implanted by the Creator and must 
have its normal and lawful exercise according to His will. 
Abraham Lincoln once said, " I have been driven many 
times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that 
I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that 
of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day." 
" And," writes St. John, " this is the confidence that 
we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to 
His will, He heareth us; and if we know that He hear- 
eth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the 
petitions that we desired of Him." 



THE MERCIES OF GOD. 

FRIDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, 
which thou hast shewed unto thy servant." — Gen. xxxii. 10. 

THESE are among the opening words of Jacob's great 
prayer. His brother Esau is advancing against him 
with four hundred armed men. Jacob has put his mind 
to the task of saving himself. He has thought out the 
problem and has acted upon his thoughts. He can do 
no more ; and so, as the shadows of the Eastern night 
begin to fall, he retires to a solitary spot near the ford of 
the river Jabbok, and there he calls upon his God. This 
beautiful prayer has furnished themes for many sermons 
and is rich in spiritual lessons. 

i. In the first place it is the prayer of humility. ;< I 
am not worthy of the least of all Thy mercies." In the 
attitude of humility alone can the creature consistently 
approach the Creator. We cannot say, " I thank Thee 
that I am not as other men are; " we cannot use the lan- 
guage of merit before our Maker; the man who pleads 
his own merit, as some one has said, does not pray, he 
but demands his due. And if Jacob's words are the 
natural expression of the human heart in great distress 
or danger, if self-righteousness instantly flees from our 
hearts and lips when the ship is sinking, when the loved 
one lies in the clutch of some disease, then, surely, it is 
equally out of place in all real prayer. As St. Augustine 

121 



122 The Bartered Birthright. 

has said, " The sufficiency of my merit is to know that 
my merit is not sufficient." 

Notice, also, that Jacob uses the present tense, " I am 
not worthy of the least of all Thy mercies and Thy truth ; " 
literally, " I am less than them all." He does not say, as 
we sometimes do, " O Lord, I was a miserable sinner, 
when I was young, when I fell from grace, when I met that 
great temptation few could have withstood." He does 
not say, " I was unworthy when I cheated Esau twenty 
years ago ; I was not strictly honest in my dealings with 
Laban seven years ago." No, he brings his confession 
down to date: "lam in the prime of life, I am rich and 
great, but I am not worthy of the least of all Thy mercies." 
Humility is not only an essential quality in all real 
prayer; it is also an integral part of Christian character 
itself. And yet so delicate a thing is this grace that it is 
scarcely safe even to be conscious of it, and the moment 
we speak of our own humility we cease to be humble. 
And so subtle a sin is spiritual pride that it often leads 
us to deceive ourselves and to attempt to deceive others. 
Coleridge, who frequently went to the root of things, was 
not far wrong when he said : 

" And the devil did grin, 
For his darling sin is pride that apes humility." 

Humility seems to be, furthermore, a plant of slow 
growth. In this age and in this country it will be safe 
to say that it is not conspicuous in the words and ways of 
the young. Many an upstart youth is wiser than the 
Creeds and has outgrown the " literature " of the Testa- 
ments. The social decencies and usages and laws which 
have been formulated by the wisdom and experience of 
his fathers are irksome. But a right estimate of our- 



The Mercies of God. 123 

selves, and some knowledge of the mercies and the truth 
of God, teach humility. Years of prayer also humble 
the soul. When the wheat is young it lifts up its head ; 
when it is nearly ripe it bows and bends lower than when 
it was green. Only out of a lifelong Christian experi- 
ence can any of us say with perfect sincerity in the day 
of safety and success, " I am not worthy of the least of 
all the mercies of God." 

2. Again, this is the prayer of faith. Jacob does not 
address a stranger, or an impersonal force, or a tendency, 
or a law. He calls upon the living, loving God, who is 
his God, whom he knows, who knows him. " O God 
of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the 
Lord." He appeals to the God of the Covenant, the 
Deity who had blessed his father and his grandfather, 
enriching them with precious promises which he had in- 
herited, and who had personally touched his own soul 
and spoken to him in promise and command. '" O God of 
my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac." Can 
you say that ? " O God of my father." "My father's 
God art Thou." If you know that, if your father's pray- 
ers have gone before you, let them be followed by your 
own. " Thine own and thy father's friend, forsake 
not." And what an argument is this to lead parents to 
become consistent communicants of the Church! If it 
be true, as it is, that we never quite know what our 
parents' hearts felt for us till we become parents our- 
selves, that when we first hold our own child in our arms 
God opens the doors of the past and reveals to us the 
sacredness and the mystery of our own father's and 
mother's love for us — if this be true, is it not also true 
that if we know our parents loved us in the Lord, dedi- 
cated us in prayer to Him who gave the gift, such 



124 The Bartered Birthright. 

knowledge must ever be the strongest of those " gold 
chains " which knit us to the throne of God ? If you 
have taught your children to pray and prayed with and 
for them, if they have seen you kneel before the Sacra- 
ment of Jesus's love, be assured, whatever else they for- 
get, they will never forget that. Will you not make it 
possible for those you love to say in the dark day — and 
the dark day will come for them ; you cannot keep it from 
them — will you not by your faith and practice make it 
possible for them to exclaim in the season of temptation 
and sorrow and despair, " O God of my father, O God 
of my mother, you helped him in that day when there 
was no help to be found in man, you strengthened her 
in her hour of anguish, O help me! " 

Notice, too, the beautiful simplicity of the prayer 
which springs from faith. Short, direct, artless, a con- 
fiding child might have uttered it to an earthly parent to 
whom it had fled for refuge. " Deliver me, I pray Thee, 
from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he will come 
and smite me." And in these childlike words we meet 
one of the deep things of human life — fear and faith 
joined together; and, paradoxical as it may seem, the 
two contradictory feelings experienced at one and the 
same time; fear for the future and faith in God — the 
same thought to which David gives utterance when he 
cries, " What time I am afraid I will trust in Thee." 
" And such," as Robertson has said, " our Christian 
life must ever be; not an entire life of rest, for we have 
sinned; nor an entire life of unrest, for God has for- 
given us; but in all life a mixture of the two. Christ 
alone had perfect tranquillity, for He alone had perfect 
purity." 

3. Again, Jacob pleads the promises. " ' Thou saidst, 



The Mercies of God. 125 

I will deal well with thee; Thou saidst, I will surely do 
thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea.' 
If Esau slay my children that promise fails." These 
promises were made at Bethel and Jacob boldly and 
fervently reminds the Promiser of His pledged word. 
The prophet Isaiah represents God as saying to His 
people, " ' Put Me in remembrance ' of My promises and 
call upon Me/' And so when Jacob pleads the promises 
his feet are on the rock, — " Thou saidst." " Thou hast 
promised." To learn the promises of Holy Scripture is 
therefore an essential part of the education of a Christ- 
ian. God's pledged word He will make good, for it is 
impossible for Him to lie. And when we can take a 
promise, as Jacob did, and turn it into a prayer, we also 
shall lay hold upon the mighty God of Jacob. Thou 
hast said, " Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall 
find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." Lord, I 
ask; I seek; I knock! Thou hast said, " A clean heart 
will I give thee, and a new spirit will I put within thee." 
Create in me, O God, a clean heart, and renew a right 
spirit within me! Thou hast said, " Call upon Me in the 
day of trouble and I will deliver thee." I, this day, O 
blessed Lord, am in trouble; deliver me from it, and 
sanctify it to my soul's good that I too may say, " It is 
good for me that I have been in trouble; before I was 
troubled I went wrong, but now have I kept Thy 
word! " 

Let us, in humility and in faith, pleading the promises, 
freely also open our hearts to our Heavenly Father, tell- 
ing out to Him all our sorrows, fears, and dangers, and 
we shall be heard and answered and delivered as Jacob 
was of old. Can we doubt it ? Shall we be surprised 
that God keeps His word ? 



126 The Bartered Birthright. 

" I stood amazed, and whispered, Can it be 
That He hath granted all the boon I sought ? 
How wonderful that He hath answered me ! 
O faithless heart ! He said that He would hear 
And answer thy poor prayer ; and He hath heard, 
And proved His promise ! Wherefore didst thou fear ? 
Why marvel that the Lord hath kept His word ? 
More wonderful if He should fail to bless 
Expectant faith and prayer with good success ! " 



TWO BANDS. 

SATURDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

' ' With my staff I passed over this Jordan ; and now I am become two 
bands." — Gen. xxxii. io. 

IT is a true saying that " a grateful thought towards 
heaven is of itself a prayer." While earnestly pray- 
ing God to save his life, his goods, and his family from 
the avenging hand of Esau, Jacob yields to a mood of 
thanksgiving which graciously sweeps down upon his 
heart. His own sin and unworthiness have been con- 
fessed — " I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies 
and of all the truth which Thou hast shewed unto Thy 
servant ; " now he will dwell upon the plenteousness of 
these mercies which he has received — "All Thy mercies." 
Let me, said Jacob, count them up, year by year, and 
realize how great and how free these mercies have been. 
Doubtless, too, his sense of the preciousness of God's 
gifts is quickened by his immediate danger of losing them 
all. It is often so with us. While our mercies are as- 
suredly ours we are careless about them; when they 
spread their wings to take their flight from us we awake 
to their value. 

While thus meditating upon all the gracious loving- 
kindnesses of the Lord through the whole course of his 
life, his eye falls upon the staff in his hand. " ' With 
this staff/ he exclaims, ' I passed over Jordan/ when I 
was a poor boy leaving home to make my way in the 
world. Then I was all alone, no servants, no changes of 

127 



128 The Bartered Birthright. 

raiment, no bags full of silver and gold, wifeless and 
childless, this staff was all I had ; and now once more I 
stand by the rolling Jordan, this time on my way home, 
home to my native land, home to the scenes of my child- 
hood ; now I am rich, my name is great, my family and 
my flocks are sufficient to form two bands! I have 
divided my family and possessions into two companies 
and sent them forward by different roads in the hope 
that one band in the darkness may escape the fury of the 
avenger. Should one band be destroyed (which God 
forbid !) I should still be the head of a great caravan, rich 
and blessed beyond any man in the land; — and once I 
stood by this Jordan a penniless youth with nothing save 
this staff in my hand ! " 

Jacob here sets an excellent example. Too many of us 
forget the staff with which we passed over Jordan. In our 
American life the greater part of our successful and well- 
to-do people can look back upon days of youthful poverty 
or struggle. Too often, however, they fail to see the past 
as Jacob saw it. Sometimes there is the blush of shame 
at the recollection of the narrow street, the farmhouse 
home, the menial tasks, the humble friends; sometimes 
there is the proud boast, " I began with nothing and my 
power and the mightiness of mine hand have gotten me 
this wealth." Jacob, on the contrary, acknowledges the 
truth: once he was poor and friendless; now through 
the undeserved mercies of God he is rich and great ; he 
has become two bands. It is to be feared that even the 
best of us are lacking in thankfulness as well as in the ex- 
pression of our thanks to God in prayer. Yet God expects 
our thanksgiving and, strange as it may seem, delights in 
our poor expressions of gratitude. * Whoso offereth Me 
thanks and praise, he honoreth Me." " In everything 



Two Bands. 129 

give thanks : for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus 
concerning you." But murmurs rather than thanks are 
on our lips. Thanksgiving has no place even in the 
prayers we teach our children. Nevertheless we have 
much to be thankful for. Health and happiness, length 
of days, providential ordering of circumstances, our good 
name, our hereditary culture, our substance, our family, 
our Christian hope, the grace which maketh us to differ 
from another — a little reflection must bring us to the 
grateful realization of the fact that these, one and all, are 
the free and undeserved mercies of God. 

It is told us as a proof of Jacob's gratitude that he 
never parted with his staff, that he leaned upon it when 
he was a-dying, and blessed the two sons of Joseph, and 
that it went with him into his grave. Some of us may 
know from personal experience how Jacob looked upon 
that staff. It may be that we too have some like posses- 
sion which money could not buy because we associate it 
with some turning-point in our own early life. Many of 
us, surely, in the confidence that goodness and mercy have 
followed us all the days of our life can look forward in 
the certain faith that there are abundant mercies yet to 
come. 

On the other hand, it is possible, only too possible, 
that some one may say, " At certain seasons I have felt 
thankful to God for His blessings; I have been grateful 
to kind friends and relatives for favors bestowed upon 
me ; yet, on the whole, as I review the past and forecast 
the future, I cannot see that I have any special reason 
for thanksgiving. There are many around me who have 
received rich and precious gifts, who seem to be favorites 
of Heaven. For my part I cannot honestly declare with 
the Psalmist, ' My cup runneth over.' " To such we may 



130 The Bartered Birthright. 

reply in the eloquent words of a well-known American 
preacher: " If one should give me a dish of sand, and 
tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for 
them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy 
fingers, and be unable to detect them ; but let me take a 
magnet and sweep through it, and how it would draw to 
itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of 
attraction ! The unthankful heart, like my finger in the 
sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart 
sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron 
so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings; 
only the iron in God's sand is gold." 

Yes, the gold of heavenly blessings unnumbered is to 
be found by every thankful heart. And one way to at- 
tain this thankful heart is to compare what God gives us 
with what we deserve. To remember that in Him we 
live and move and have our being, that we cannot deny 
that we have more than we actually need, that if we are 
not worthy of the least of all the mercy and all the truth 
which God has bestowed upon us — how much more are 
we unworthy of all the mercy and of all the truth which 
He has shown us in the life, death, and resurrection of 
Jesus Christ our Lord. For, all earthly benefits, life, 
health, food, raiment, reason, are simply shadows and 
types of that great mercy and truth revealed to us in the 
Church's Divine Head, in whom and through whom we 
have the means of grace and the hope of glory. 

Another method of attaining a thankful heart is to 
think and to speak often of the goodness of God. The 
thought framed in words addressed to God and men will 
strengthen and increase the feeling in our hearts. It is 
significant that the great poet of our language so fre- 
quently teaches this truth. " God's goodness hath 



Two Bands. 131 

been great to thee," he says, " let never day nor night 
unhallowed pass, but still remember what the Lord hath 
done." Again, he addresses the Giver of all good gifts: 
" O Lord, who lendest me life, lend me a heart replete 
with thankfulness." And again, we have the beautiful 
words: " Or any ill escaped, or good attained, let us 
remember still, Heaven chalked the way that brought us 
thither." That was Jacob's consolation. He knew 
" Heaven had chalked the way " he had journeyed from 
Jordan back to Jordan once more, and would still lead 
him on. Such grateful confidence should be our 
own. 

But in the words of the text, " I am become two 
bands," there is another lesson which must at least be 
mentioned. Our Lord by His baptism in this same river 
Jordan sanctified water to the mystical washing away of 
sin ; therefore those who have been made members of His 
body in that sacrament of regeneration can say, " With my 
staff, with what were only the natural gifts of conscience 
and the works of the natural man, I passed over the 
waves of my baptism ; and now I am become two bands 
— I have that godliness which has promise of the life 
that now is and also of that which is to come." 

We are told, furthermore, that Jacob's family was in 
two separate bands. So is ours. Some are in Paradise, 
some on earth; but in the blessed communion of saints 
one family still. Of the faithful departed the Christian 
heart may say, " We see not the glorious faces of those 
who are now walking before Him in the land of the 
living; but it is a joy to know that they are sometimes 
turned towards us. We cannot hear the voices which 
sound in that distant land, celebrating the praise of God ; 
but it is a comfort to know that among those utterances 



132 The Bartered Birthright. 

are prayers for us who are still in our pilgrimage and who 
serve as yet by faith." They do not forget us. Let us 
keep warm our love for them and strive to follow their 
good examples. 

So, too, one day, every one of us will in another sense 
become two bands. The soul will be separated from the 
body. But they will be reunited again beyond Jordan 
as were the two bands of Jacob of old. 

Thus all our Christian hopes are centred in Christ. 
Temporal blessings, spiritual gifts, heavenly promises, 
come alike from Him, to whom be praise, and thanks- 
giving, and dominion, forever and ever! 



GOD WRESTLING WITH JACOB. 

MONDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled a man with him until 
the breaking of the day." — Gen. xxxii. 24. 

AT mid-Lent the Church would seem to suggest a 
change in the spiritual exercises of her children. 
Daring the first weeks of this holy season we were 
charged to give ourselves up to the work of repentance, 
and in the Collect for yesterday we were taught, as the 
result of our self-examinations, to acknowledge that for 
our evil deeds we do worthily deserve to be punished ; 
but the days that remain are especially consecrated to 
the remembrance of those mysterious sufferings by which 
the gift of repentance was purchased for us. We are 
now in a general sense to turn from self to Christ. Our 
Lord's wrestling with sin and death and with His own 
human will are from this time on to be much in our 
thoughts. 

The life of Jacob, which seems specially helpful for 
Lenten study, adapts itself, as we have divided it, to 
such devout considerations. In the narrative before us 
we are to see this Heel-catcher and Supplanter wrestling 
long years between his love for self and his love for God, 
never since his Ladder-vision failing to live the life of 
faith and prayer, yet constantly setting his affections on 
things below — this man we are now to see turned away 
from earth and brought face to face with God in a con- 
flict terminating in victory for the best that was in him, 

133 



134 The Bartered Birthright. 

making him worthy of his new name, Israel, the Prince 
of God. 

In his great prayer he has confessed his unworthiness 
of the least of all the mercies of God, and now, as he ap- 
proaches the Holy Land to possess it as the inheritor of 
the promises of the Covenant, he beseeches Divine pro- 
tection from the dangers which confront him. He fears 
his brother Esau, who, with four hundred armed men, 
threatens his destruction. He has sent his family and 
his flocks over the stream. In the night, restless and 
sleepless, he wanders along the banks of the river in the 
darkness. There in the shadows " a man " wrestles with 
him through the night. It was some one who desired 
to hold him back from entering upon the inheritance. 
Jacob put forth all his strength, but the vigorous muscles 
which once lifted the great stone from the well's mouth 
in order that Rachel's sheep might drink found their 
match in his unknown antagonist. He seeks in vain to 
discover the features of his foe. A sense of mystery 
begins to creep upon him. Can it be Esau's guardian 
angel who is holding him back from the Promised Land ? 
Possibly it is his own alter ego in bodily form grappling 
with him — a thought likely to alarm the boldest. But 
Jacob, who has been a wrestler from the day of his 
birth, when he caught his brother by the heel, struggled 
on " until the breaking of the day." " And when he," 
the mysterious adversary, " saw that he prevailed not 
against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh ; and the 
hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled 
with him." Instantly Jacob realizes that his assailant 
is Divine, and, ceasing to resist, clings to the Angel-man 
with the importunate cry of entreaty, " I will not let 
Thee go except Thou bless me! " The answer to this 



God Wrestling with Jacob. 135 

heartfelt appeal was a question, " What is thy name ? " 
" And he said, Jacob," "The Heel-catcher," "The 
Supplanter. " Then, replied his Companion, " Thy name 
shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel— the princely 
wrestler with God — for as a prince hast thou power with 
God and with man, and hast prevailed. And He blessed 
him there." 

Now, it is not necessary to materialize the old narra- 
tive, for we know that all wrestling which brings spiritual 
blessing takes place in the human soul. Yet Jacob 
speaks of this superhuman Wrestler as " God," and the 
blessing he received came from God. This is the strange 
part of the story. We are familiar with the thought that 
a man must wrestle with himself; that the higher and the 
lower natures in us contend for the mastery. We also 
know that each one of us is called upon to wrestle with 
the world. Rivalry in business, rivalry in the affections, 
adverse circumstances, environment, the course of events 
— each one of us who would maintain a consistent Christ- 
ian life and character must wrestle against the precepts, 
the forces, the vain pomp and glory of the world. We 
know, too, that the Christian is sometimes set to wrestle 
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers 
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
in high places, against the wiles of the devil. We all 
know from personal experience what it is to contend with 
the adversary of our souls who goeth about as a roaring 
lion seeking whom he may devour. To wrestle with the 
world, the flesh, and the devil is a warfare to which we 
are all called in our Christian Baptism. 

But is God also our enemy ? Must we wrestle against 
Him to save ourselves from harm ? Does this passage 
teach that we must agonize in prayer in order to wrest 



136 The Bartered Birthright. 

from unwilling God His blessings ? No, because God is 
for us and not against us, and ever more ready to give 
than we to ask. It is a sufficient answer to all such 
questions to point out that it was not Jacob who wrestled 
with God but God who wrestled with Jacob. It was 
not Jacob who wrestled in prayer for a blessing; it was 
God who wrestled with Jacob to subdue him into a will- 
ingness to be blessed. Divine Love contended with 
double-minded, double-dealing Jacob in order to win his 
entire trust and confidence. Up to this night guile had 
been the patriarch's rule of life; cunning, management, 
trickery, had been his chief reliance in accomplishing the 
purposes which his ambition set before him. During this 
day, however, he had made a resolution of amendment. 
When Esau threatened his destruction he promised to 
relinquish all that he had obtained by fraud from his 
brother; he sent princely presents, addressed messages to 
Esau as " Lord," thus declaring himself ready to aban- 
don all claims to be his father's heir and head of the clan. 
But he had no thought of resigning his right to the spirit- 
ual promise of the Covenant of Abraham. Probably he 
was perplexed in mind as to the separation of the inter- 
nal possessions of the birthright, which included the 
promise of being the forefather of the Messiah, from the 
outward privileges and powers of the headship of his tribe. 
It may be that his weeping and tears spoken of by the 
prophet Hosea were caused by difficulty in understand- 
ing how the sacrifice he was determined to make as an act 
of restitution would still leave him in possession of the 
real and chief object of his desire. Probably also he felt 
that Esau's anger was all, or nearly all, that demanded 
the sacrifice; that he secretly hoped by the keenness, 
nimbleness, and strength of his own trained mental 



God Wrestling with Jacob. 137 

powers again to outwit his dull-witted brother and 
somehow place once more in his own hands all that he 
professed himself ready to relinquish forever. At any 
rate it is clear that the Jacob-nature, the deceit, the love 
of money, the pride of intellect, so strong in him always, 
though subdued by grace, was still predominant. Ac- 
cordingly he was unfit to enter the Holy Land. He 
must be made ready to receive the blessing prepared for 
him. To break down forever his besetting sin the Name- 
less Wrestler seized upon him, nor let him go until, 
awakened to the real significance of the contention, 
wounded and helpless, Jacob clung to Him who with- 
stood him in love, and begged the heavenly blessing 
upon his soul. 

Moses had a similar experience. When he refused to 
submit his sons to the initiatory rite of the Old Covenant 
he was stricken down with illness. Then he obeyed and 
yielded his will to the will of God. Job, too, for his 
self-confidence and self-righteousness, was subjected to a 
discipline even more mysterious than the wrestling with 
Jacob. And in one way or another the Spirit of God is 
striving with us also here this day. A crisis of which we 
are conscious may be upon some of us. We feel that 
God is seeking with violence to crush down the evil 
weeds of self-will in our hearts, and self-will is so dear 
that we struggle on against the loving force of God. But 
more frequently, and especially with the young, it is the 
goodness of God that would lead us to repentance and stay 
us from evil. His striving with our stubborn wills is in 
the gentle and gracious ministries of His Church, in the 
affections of our homes, in the blessings of His providence. 
Punishment is " His strange work." It would be easy 
for this Divine Wrestler to subdue us by a stroke. But 



138 The Bartered Birthright. 

He will seek first and often to subdue us by love. If we 
realized that He who wrestles with us is our best friend, 
should we not instantly cease our resistance and cling to 
Him as Jacob did, crying, " I will not let Thee go ex- 
cept Thou bless me! " No sooner is that prayer uttered 
from the heart than the blessing comes and the morning 
breaks. 



PENIEL. 

TUESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel : for I have seen God 
face to face." — Gen. xxxii. 30. 

WE cannot fail to see a spiritual as well as a literal 
meaning in the story of God's wrestling with 
Jacob at the fords of the Jabbok. The writer seems 
desirous of showing us a parable in the history. In the 
original this is clearer than in the English version. 
Everything in the narrative " is double, like the swan 
and its shadow on the lake." The peculiarities of the 
style, especially its unusual repetitions, can scarcely be 
otherwise explained. The narrative undoubtedly bears 
evidences of the fact that the sacred historian invites his 
readers to look below the surface meaning of his words, 
and would call attention to the "ethical crisis" in 
Jacob's career and emphasize the significance of the dis- 
closure of the Divine purposes and methods here made 
to Jacob and to all who walk by faith. To-day let us 
consider three of these deeper, spiritual teachings of the 
narrative. 

1. In the first place we may observe that the Christian 
fathers and older interpreters, almost without exception, 
make the wrestling Jacob a type of Christ in His agony 
in Gethsemane. Jacob was alone when he wrestled; 
Christ, too, was alone in the Garden when the mysterious 
strife came upon Him, — " He trod the wine-press alone 
and of the people there was none with Him." Near the 

139 



140 The Bartered Birthright. 

ford of the Jabbok Jacob wrestled; Christ wrestled near 
the brook of Kedron. It was night when both endured 
the conflict. An angel blessed Jacob ; an angel strength- 
ened the Lord in His agony. We read that the hollow 
of Jacob's thigh was out of joint and of Christ we are 
told that all His bones were out of joint when it pleased 
the Lord to bruise Him. Neither has it escaped atten- 
tion that Jacob was touched in the thigh and that from 
his loins the true Israelite was to descend, who, in the 
fulness of time should wrestle and prevail and open the 
Kingdom of Heaven, the real land of promise, to all be- 
lievers. In the Garden of Gethsemane there was a 
struggle, momentary it may be, but in some sense a real 
struggle, between the human will in Christ and the will 
of God. He desired to be delivered from that cup. In 
His conflict there was bloody sweat and tears and He 
conquered only as Jacob conquered, by a submission in 
which He was enabled to utter the prayer, " Not My will 
but Thine be done." St. Ambrose speaks for all the early 
Church when he says: " Because the faith of Jacob was 
invincible, and his devotion insuperable, therefore God 
revealed to him hidden mysteries, and touched his thigh ; 
for from him was to come the Lord Jesus, born of a virgin 
and co-equal with God ; through whose cross and passion 
sins are forgiven, and the world redeemed ; and a glorious 
resurrection and a blessed immortality are purchased for 
us." 

2. Again, in Jacob's saying, " This spot is Peniel because 
here I have seen God face to face," we may read below 
the surface of the words. Jacob's conception of God was 
far short of that which has been revealed to us. We know 
that God is Love. You will remember that Jacob said 
to the Heavenly Wrestler, " Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy 



Peniel. 141 

name." ' Wherefore dost thou ask after My name ? " 
was the answer which denied the request. It was suffi- 
cient that Jacob recognized his antagonist as the God of 
Abraham and of Isaac ; the time was not yet ripe for a 
fuller revelation of the Divine name and character. 
That revelation we have received bounteously. We know 
that God's name and nature is Love. And yet the lov- 
ing-kindness of the Lord which wrestled with Jacob and 
prepared him for the blessing and finally blessed him is 
evidence that God has not changed and was in Himself 
of old what He is now and ever must be. Charles Wes- 
ley has finely brought out the Christian interpretation of 
the story in his hymn : 

" Come, O Thou Traveller unknown, 

Whom still I hold, but cannot see, 
My company before is gone, 

And I am left alone with Thee ; 
With Thee all night I mean to stay, 
And wrestle till the break of day. 

" I need not tell Thee who I am, 

My misery or sin declare ; 
Thyself hast called me by my name ; 

Look on Thy hands and read it there ! 
But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou ? 
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now. 

" Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal 

Thy new, unutterable name ? 
Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell ; 

To know it now resolved I am : 
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go 
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know. 

" Yield to me now, for I am weak, 
But confident in self-despair ; 
Speak to my heart, in blessing speak, 



142 The Bartered Birthright. 

Be conquered by my instant prayer ! 
Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move, 
And tell me if Thy name is Love ! 

" My prayer hath power with God ; the grace 

Unspeakable I now receive ; 
Through faith I see Thee face to face, 

I see Thee face to face, and live ; 
In vain I have not wept and strove, 
Thy nature, and Thy name, is Love. 

" I know Thee, Saviour, who Thou art, 

Jesus, the feeble sinners' friend ! 
Nor wilt Thou with the night depart, 

But stay, and love me to the end ; 
Thy mercies never shall remove, 
Thy nature, and Thy name, is Love. 

" Contented now upon my thigh 

I halt, till life's short journey end, 
All helplessness, all weakness, I 

On Thee alone for strength depend ; 
Nor have I power from Thee to move ; 
Thy nature, and Thy name, is Love." 

And that same Divine love, doubt it not, is wrestling 
with each one of us to-day. It resists us, now with a 
gentleness scarcely observable, now with violence, in 
order to win our answering love and to prepare us for 
blessings already laid up in store. 

3. Take a third thought. At Peniel Jacob learned the 
prevenient, the going-before grace of God. God stood 
before His servant to lead him into the paths of holiness. 
It is a beautiful thought that God is the inspirer of our 
prayers, of our purest spiritual longings, of all desires to 
conquer self, — a thought full of strength and comfort, a 
thought to make us very glad and very hopeful, a thought 
to make us always willing to follow the Divine drawing 



Peniel. 143 

and enter into the heavenly presence where we too may 
see God face to face. He knows how weak and gross our 
apprehension of Him is. " He knoweth whereof we are 
made. He remembereth that we are but dust." He sees 
how unrefined and earthly we are and He goes before and 
meets us, wrestles with us, in order that He may reveal 
Himself to us and us to ourselves. When we are sad, 
as Jacob was, and worn with care, anxious about the 
morrow, fearful of what is coming on the earth, troubled 
for ourselves and ours, our hearts trembling for the Ark 
of God and the future of the Church, and we can find no 
consolation in human companionship, but perceive our- 
selves to be drawn away by invisible hands, then it is 
God — the God who inspires as well as answers the soul's 
needs — who is leading us to a Peniel of blessing. At 
such seasons we seek God as " Thirsty lands gasp for the 
golden showers with outstretched hands; " we are lifted 
above all earthly thoughts. "Give me Thine own gift of 
holiness," is our earnest cry; "make me like Thyself; cre- 
ate in me a new heart and renew a right spirit within 
me." We come before God as Jacob came, with a 
bounded vision ; we go from Him with our horizon widen- 
ing with the day. We take on something of the free- 
dom and calmness and patience and peace of the matured 
spiritual state. We too can say as we come out from these 
Peniels of conflict, " I have seen God face to face and my 
life is preserved." 

Let us remember the three suggestions brought before 
us this day. At Peniel we see in wrestling Jacob a figure 
of the Lord in His agony in Gethsemane saying, " Thy 
will be done;" in God's conflict with Jacob we learn 
that the name and nature of the Divine Wrestler is Love; 
and from the fact that God went before His servant, 



144 The Bartered Birthright. 

called him to the contest, came to him, and prepared 
him even at the cost of wounds for higher blessings, we 
are taught the going-before of the grace of God who is 
the inspirer of all advances in holiness, who worketh in us 
both to will and to do of His good pleasure. 

Yes, the grace of the God who loves us will go before 
us through the long night of our wrestling, will ever keep 
us wakeful and watchful, will ever inspire and quicken 
our souls to renounce the evil and choose the good, even 
by healing bruises, until the day break and the shadows 
flee away. 



THE PRINCE OF GOD. 

WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel : for as a prince 
hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." — Gen. 
xxxii. 28. 

THE spiritual experience related in this chapter has 
sometimes been called Jacob's conversion. But 
Jacob was converted in his youth at Bethel. At Bethel 
God first touched his heart in the vision of the ladder 
let down from heaven to earth. There Jacob chose God 
and the service of God, dedicating his life to Him who 
thus revealed the heavenly world to His servant's ador- 
ing faith. The present crisis in his career, wherein he 
received his new name, belongs to the experiences of the 
maturer believer. As the spiritual life advances and the 
years pass, the child of God usually comes to some such 
second marked parting of the ways. The experience of 
God's people of old finds its analogy in the spiritual life, 
as has frequently been pointed out ; and some years of 
desert wandering usually intervene between the Passover, 
with its deliverance from the oppressor, and the passage 
over Jordan into the happy confidence of assured 
possession. 

At Bethel long years ago Jacob saw the Ladder-vision 
and became a religious man. He believed in the things 
above his head. He put his trust in God. But he also 
believed in himself; he thought of God, for the most 

part, as One who could protect him from his foes and 
10 

145 



146 The Bartered Birthright. 

help him to gain the earthly riches he coveted. Up to 
this time he was Jacob, the Heel-catcher, the Supplanter, 
the master of guile in all its forms, who always met men 
from whom advantage might be taken with the confidence 
of a superior intellect, vigorous in astuteness, unscrupu- 
lous in duplicity. He has not been permitted, it is true, 
to remain ignorant of his besetting sin, for more than 
once his craft has been punished, his pride humbled to 
the dust ; neither has he failed in some earnest efforts to 
subdue his lower, baser nature. And so when the Divine 
Wrestler asked him his name he honestly confessed, " My 
name is Jacob, the layer of snares, the schemer, the plot- 
ter; Heel-catcher I have been from my youth up until 
now/' Jacob's answer is the explanation of the struggle 
forced upon him. He must be taught once for all that 
the intellect used in the service of the senses is irreligious. 
He must be made to realize in the depths of his soul that 
religion cannot be divorced from morality ; that the all- 
holy God cannot sanction lying, deceit, or pride, whether 
intellectual or spiritual ; that earthly place and station 
must not be sought for its own sake nor ever by fraudu- 
lent arts. And so He who loved Jacob wrestled with 
him through the night. The agony of the strife was sore, 
lasting till the darkness faded before the dawn. In the 
wrestling of that night his Divine Friend and Foe sub- 
dued Jacob, taught him to say, " Thy will be done," and 
from henceforth he dwells in a higher moral and spiritual 
sphere, leaving his old duplicity behind him forever. 

Thy name," said the Divine Wrestler, " shall be called 
no more Jacob, but Israel ; for as a prince hast thou power 
with God and with men and hast prevailed." 

We shall make a mistake, however, and a serious mis- 
take, if we suppose that the change in his name indicated 



The Prince of God. 147 

a radical change made at that moment in the entire tone 
and temper of his inner life. The dawn of that memorable 
day was but the harvest morning of a long season of 
spiritual growth. All that had gone before in his remark- 
able and eventful career was a preparation for the struggle 
in which he gained his new name. Peniel was a richer, 
brighter place in his memory than were Bethel or Maha- 
naim ; for though at Bethel he saw the angels of God 
ascending and descending on the crystal stairs, and at Ma- 
hanaim met them in the very road as they shed from their 
folded wings a golden glory on the earth, at Peniel he 
saw " God face to face and his life was preserved." Here 
he finds himself endowed with peculiar blessings unen- 
joyed and unknown before. If Bethel was the gate of 
heaven this is its vestibule. Like David and Solomon he 
asks and is given more than he asks. He begs a blessing 
and is named Israel; he asks for silver and is given gold; 
he asks for bread and is given manna. But Peniel was 
what it was because Jacob has always been unconsciously 
preparing for it. It would be folly to think that he 
would have triumphed in this hour and gained his princely 
name, if he had never struggled before. What happened 
is the result of a long ripening of the heart. It is the 
crowning of a long work. This is not the first time nor 
the second nor the hundredth time that Jacob has been 
in the Divine presence and sought divine aid. The time 
has come for Peniel. The fruits of the spirit, like all 
fruits under normal conditions, ripen slowly. Let us be 
patient, nor weary in well-doing, and in due season we too 
shall reap if we faint not. " Let us hold fast the profes- 
sion of our faith without wavering ; for He is faithful that 
promised ; and let us consider one another to provoke un- 
to love and to good works." And the same Apostle says 



148 The Bartered Birthright. 

in another place : " Christ is as a son over His own house ; 
whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and 
the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." St. Paul, 
too, exhorts the Corinthians : " Therefore, my beloved 
brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding 
in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that 
your labor is not in vain in the Lord." 

It is furthermore to be observed that in winning his 
new name Jacob won for himself an enduring place in 
secular and religious history. He is the recognized 
founder of the Israelitish race and nation. When we 
think what the word Israel stands for in literature, in the 
life of the world, past, present, and to come, in the 
spiritual culture and aspiration of the race, we realize 
in some measure the wonderful significance of the 
blessing bestowed upon Jacob at Peniel. All Israelites 
have looked to Jacob as their ancestor; and Christians, 
too, by their faith, are children of Israel. Nor can we 
fail to notice that the contrast between the cunning of 
Jacob's earlier life and the purer, nobler manhood into 
which he grew, of which his new name was the symbol, 
is a contrast which is to be traced in his descendants, 
both as a nation and as individuals. In true Israelites, 
as in Nathanael of the New Testament, there is no guile; 
and of Christ, the King of Israel, the true Israel, it is 
written, " Neither was guile found in his mouth." More 
than one commentator has pointed out that the most 
vivid representation of this contrast — of the contrast be- 
tween the Jacob-nature and the Israel-nature — is the 
guileless Christ receiving from Judas the kiss of betrayal. 

Again, while Jacob entered the Holy Land on the 
morrow not as Jacob but as Israel, he nevertheless carried 
with him the marks of the contest. The lameness re- 



The Prince of God. 149 

ceived in the struggle remained and ever afterwards he 
halted in his walk. " So it sometimes happens," as has 
been said, " that a man never recovers from the severe 
handling he has received at some turning-point in his 
life." After God wrestles with a man to purify his soul 
often that man goes limping through life from the con- 
test. The broken health, or fortune, or pride leaves him 
bereft of the confident, jaunty self-assurance which once 
gave a force and a charm to his outward personality. Yet 
Jacob's wounds were tokens of victory and were ever so 
regarded by his descendants. Our Lord, after His Resur- 
rection, bore, and still bears, the five wounds of His 
Passion; but they are glorified wounds, evidences of His 
conquest over sin, Satan, and death ; wounds spiritualized, 
beautified beyond description ; nevertheless wounds which 
remain as badges of His sorrow and of His triumph. The 
nail-prints of the Cross are the abiding proofs of Christ's 
struggle as well as of His victory. And the fact that He 
suffered in His earthly wrestling, as His wounds show, is 
the chief reason why He holds His supreme place in his- 
tory and in the affections of our hearts. Power with God 
which Jacob won, which Christ won, left upon the victor 
the scars of the conflict. So it is with us in our measure. 
The conflicts to which we are called are sore. They leave 
upon us enduring reminders of the sufferings of the strife. 
But these wounds are the badges of our power. Goethe 
touches the border of this truth when he says : 

" Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 

Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours 
Weeping upon his bed hath sat, 

He knows ye not, ye unseen powers." 

Spiritual conflict alone can win a high mastery of self. 



150 The Bartered Birthright. 

Faith, patience, true wisdom — these precious possessions 
come not of themselves. Night-watchings, fightings 
within and without, agonies of the flesh, travails of the 
soul — from these and such like wrestlings come the peace 
and power of a will that owns the will of God. Such 
battles leave their wound-prints, but these wound-prints 
are the emblems of victory. They are scars glorified and 
beautified because evidences of that hard-fought battle in 
which the wrestling believer has been changed into an 
Israel who has power with God and men and prevails. 



STRANGE GODS PUT AWAY. 

THURSDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put 
away the strange gods that are among you." — Gen. xxxv. 2. 

SOMEONE who knew the heart of man has said, 
" Nothing is so pleasant as to give up one's will in 
ones own way" The pleasantness of such subtlety had 
a peculiar charm for Jacob. But at Peniel God wrestled 
with him and taught him the vanity of shams in religion. 
As the sun rose that day on halting Jacob he was ready 
for the first time to say with perfect sincerity, " Thy will, 
not mine, be done; done in Thine own way." The narra- 
tive which leads up to the text shows us that the new 
grace bestowed upon Jacob, of which his new name, 
Israel, was the symbol, was a reality and marked out an 
epoch in the culture of his soul. He resolved to restore 
to his brother Esau all that he had obtained by fraud. 
In the strength of that resolution he played the man, 
placed himself at the head of his reunited bands and 
boldly advanced, doubting not that he should prevail 
with man, according to the promise of the Wrestler, as 
he had already prevailed with God. In a few hours 
Esau's four hundred mounted warriors caught sight of 
the slowly advancing caravan and galloped down upon 
them, and behold ! Esau threw away his weapon, ran to 
meet Jacob, embraced him, and they both wept. In the 
night God had " appeased " Esau. Jacob adhered to his 
resolution, made the same night in his wrestling, addressed 

151 



152 The Bartered Birthright. 

his brother as " Lord," recognized him as the first-born, 
heir of his father's earthly goods, head of the tribe, chief 
in all save the spiritual promise of the birthright. In his 
own frank and hearty way Esau forgave Jacob on the 
spot, welcomed his family and declined the rich gifts 
Jacob offered, saying, " Keep them, my brother, I have 
enough. ' ' But Jacob insisted upon making the restitution. 
!i If now," he said, " I have found grace in thy sight, 
then receive my present at my hand : for therefore I have 
seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, 
and thou wast pleased with me. Take, I pray thee, my 
blessing that is brought to thee; because God hath dealt 
graciously with me, and because I have enough. And 
he urged him, and he took it." On both sides there may 
have been something of that excess of courtesy character- 
istic of Oriental manners; each said, " I have enough " — 
a saying which few men of to-day, it is to be feared, could 
repeat with entire truthfulness; yet the old Jewish inter- 
pretation of the peculiar accent used in the Hebrew where 
mention is made of Esau's " kiss," and that modern con- 
struction of Jacob's words which makes them false and 
canting, do equal injustice to the men and to the narra- 
tive. The reconciliation was real and true. Esau ac- 
cepted the presents and never asked for more. He cared 
nothing whatever for the religious privileges of the birth- 
right, and the question of rank did not concern him. He 
was duke of his own Edom country and he had enough. 
Jacob's solemn words reminded him of the holy lessons 
of his childhood. He was touched by the look on his 
brother's face. In his eagerness to give expression to 
the impulse of the moment he offered to accompany his 
brother on his journey. But the prudence and foresight 
which never deserted Jacob warned him that it would be 



Strange Gods Put Away. 153 

well to part while the reconciliation was complete, while 
each could carry away softening memories of the meet- 
ing; whereupon he soon separated from Esau and went 
on his journey. 

Notice that Jacob left behind him only his presents. 
He departed richer, far richer, rather than poorer, because 
of the sacrifice which he had made in will, which he was 
ready to make in deed. We began with the saying that 

Nothing is so pleasant as to give up one's own will in 
one's own way." Might we not add that it is also very 
pleasant to make a real sacrifice, as Jacob did, and be 
immediately rewarded by the return of all and more than 
we sacrificed ? There is a true story, which possibly 
would not be altogether foreign to the experience of some 
of us, of a man who, after a severe inward struggle, forced 
himself to give a certain sum of money in response to 
some urgent call of the Church, and who soon afterwards 
received, quite unexpectedly, a much larger sum. The 
story, moreover, goes on to tell us that when he was 
asked again to give he resolved to repeat his former 
stroke of good luck and gave this time with the distinct 
hope and expectation of getting back double his money 
— and met with disappointment. In this lottery he drew 
a blank. Generosity, righteousness, love, are always re- 
warded ; they are their own reward. The temporal re- 
wards of goodness, on the contrary, are not to be gambled 
for, nor does God buy our service with an immediate, 
unfailing, earthly compensation. 

Notice, also, the significance of Jacob's return to the 
land of promise. The secular writers do not exag- 
gerate when they speak of Jacob's home-coming as a 
" great historical event ; " great, because he and his shep- 
herd tribe "bore with them the future religious destinies 



154 The Bartered Birthright. 

of the world." After the long journey his flocks needed 
rest ; and he, too, had passed through trials which entitled 
him to a season of repose and meditation. Accordingly 
he settled near the border, first in the lowlands, after- 
wards in the highlands, of Shechem ; bought and paid for 
a large tract of land, making payment in coined silver — 
mentioned here for the first time, probably stamped with 
the image of a lamb, there being no mention of gold coin 
until the reign of David. Here also in Shechem he dug 
the well which still bears his name. Travellers tell us 
that the well goes down through twenty feet of loose 
soil, this part being carefully built in with neatly dressed 
stones, after which the bore is made through the solid 
limestone rock. ' The entire depth was, in the year 
1 88 1, sixty-seven feet, but in 1866 it was seventy-five 
feet, and may originally have been a hundred, or a hun- 
dred and fifty, for stones are continually dropped into it 
by visitors." We are also told that the bore is nine feet 
in diameter, and that it usually contains as much as 
twelve feet of water, although sometimes dry in the sum- 
mer-time. The sinking of such a well is a proof of 
Jacob's skill, industry, and wealth, as well as an " exist- 
ing monument of his habitual prudence," for an enemy 
might have cut him off from the stream. The slope upon 
which this well is located has become famous in Jewish 
annals. Here Abraham built his first altar in the land 
of Canaan; Joseph's bones, carried in the exodus from 
Egypt, were interred near by at his dying command; 
and at Jacob's well our blessed Lord declared His Messiah- 
ship to the woman of Samaria, foretold the outpouring 
of the Holy Spirit and the extension of Christian faith 
and worship throughout the world. 

Many years of peace and prosperity ensued. But the 



Strange Gods Put Away. 155 

repose of the household was rudely broken by two of 
Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, who with a deceitful 
cruelty sacked the town of Shechem as an act of vengeance 
for a wrong done to their sister Dinah, slaughtering many 
of the natives, making captives of the rest, and carrying 
off the spoils. There was danger that other tribes in the 
neighborhood would take up the quarrel and destroy 
Jacob with all his family. In this hour of peril the 
patriarch's Divine Friend reminded him of Bethel, where 
he would be safe — Bethel, which he had too long neg- 
lected, It was a call to a renewed advance in holiness. 
He must no more be content with a border residence in 
the land of promise. The sins of his children warned 
him that he had neglected their religious training, had 
failed to govern his household as a man of God. Seeing 
clearly the cause of the evil which had fallen upon him, 
he calls his family to repentance and prayer. " Put 
away," was his command, " the strange gods that are 
among you, and change your garments: and let us arise 
and go to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto 
God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and 
was with me in the way which I went." The women 
of the household were chiefly responsible for this idola- 
trous worship. Rachel herself had stolen her father's 
images and doubtless consulted them in the presence of 
the children and dependants. But when Jacob gave the 
command, ashamed of the folly of their superstition, all 
obeyed and delivered up the idols, which he buried be- 
neath an oak in Shechem. 

The lesson is plain. Heads of religious households are 
accountable for the strange gods beneath their roofs. Is 
the tone of our own home life free from such contamina- 
tion ? Is the talk of our sons and daughters at the family 



156 The Bartered Birthright. 

board and fireside untouched by worldliness, untarnished 
by the materialism of the day ? Are pure deeds, lofty 
aims, unselfish behavior fostered and praised there and 
the example of them set in the fairest colors ? Were this 
text painted on the walls of the living-room of Christian 
homes it might preach a sermon many of us need: "Put 
away the strange gods that are among you ! *' 



THE OAK OF SHECHEM. 

FRIDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their 
hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears ; and Jacob hid them 
under the oak which was by Shechem." — Gen. xxxv. 4. 



M 



AN has been called an imitative animal. He does 
as others do. This instinctive readiness to imitate 
the words and ways and acts of those around us gives to 
example its power and its responsibility. In every rela- 
tion of life, consciously or unconsciously, we influence 
one another, and there is nothing so constraining as 
example. 

In the text we learn that while Jacob was struggling 
out of his old selfish life into a nobler manhood, ceasing 
to be Jacob, becoming Israel, the Prince of God, his 
household was being corrupted with idolatry. The 
example of Rachel, who still retained the images she 
had stolen from her father, the faith and practices of the 
servants and of the heathen captives of Shechem, ap- 
pealed to the superstitions of the children, and little by 
little the members of the chosen family were being 
turned away from the true God to fix their affections 
upon idols made with hands. No doubt Jacob should 
have taken the idols from his wife years before, when he 
first discovered them. But his love for Rachel was so 
tender that he had not the heart to displease her. It 
may be that the images and other objects of superstition, 
supposed to be endowed with talismanic virtues, were 

157 



158 The Bartered Birthright. 

kept out of his sight, and that the worship of them, for 
the most part, escaped the attention of one so deeply 
engrossed with other interests. Still, he knew something 
of the state of affairs, and he " held his peace." If, 
however, for any reason, he had not cared to exercise his 
authority, surely one with Jacob's power in mastering 
men would have found it easy to win these young people 
from their superstitions. His powerful intellect, em- 
ploying the craftiness he loved, would have met with 
little opposition or suspicion. A sarcastic allusion to the 
infinite power of men-made gods before Simeon and Levi ; 
a hint to Reuben that the first-born was not necessarily 
the heir; a slight sternness or an intimation of restricted 
liberties to wilful Dinah, the only daughter; a loving ap- 
peal to little Joseph, who like his father dreamed of the 
stars and of what was beyond them — some such course as 
this would have checked the evil. One of the Puritan di- 
vines speaks of a father who whipped his son for swearing 
and swore himself while he whipped him, thus doing more 
harm by his example than good by his correction. But 
Jacob neither set the example of worshipping idols nor cor- 
rected his children for such folly. He took no notice of it. 
Christian parents cannot make over to their children 
their own spiritual attainments, but they can restrain 
them from the idols of the world. Perhaps the heaviest 
punishment ever visited upon a believing parent was 
meted out to Eli. And Eli was punished not because he 
failed to lead his children into those higher paths of holi- 
ness which he himself loved; retribution came upon him 
simply because " his sons made themselves vile and he 
restrained them not." This much at least Eli might 
have done, Jacob might have done — every Christian 
parent might do to-day. 



The Oak of Shechem. 159 

And so the young people followed the example of the 
mother and of the servants. The power of example can 
scarcely be over-stated. What is any other source of 
influence in comparison ? " Actions speak louder than 
words; " yet speech is potent. The poet says truly: 

" Words are things, and a small drop of ink, 
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces 
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." 

But the words will die away on the ear; those thoughts 
will vanish with the closed book. You may forget the 
one, you may neglect the other. From the example of 
those around you, however, there is no escape. In 
childhood example is everything. The lessons thus 
learned in the early years are seldom unlearned or for- 
gotten. It was Ruskin who said: " Take your vase of 
Venice glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in 
its transparent heat, and recover that to its clearness and 
rubied glory, when the north wind has blown upon it; 
but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from 
God's presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to 
him — at least in this world," It is also true that the 
capacity of youth to receive impressions for good or for 
evil never grows old. We are ever as steel to hold such 
impressions, as wax to take them. The photographer's 
sensitive plate and the ^Eolian harp are familiar illustra- 
tions of the readiness of the human heart to respond to 
outward influences. We are moulded by our outward 
surroundings. We are the products of environment. 
Rightly or wrongly modern thought places environment 
above heredity. 

Furthermore, the influence of example is often an un- 
conscious one. It is what we are rather than what we do 



160 The Bartered Birthright. 

or say that moulds others. The shadow of the Apostle 
Peter passing by wrought miracles while Peter knew it 
not. Every man casts a moral shadow in which, often 
unintentionally, the man himself heals or wounds. 
There can be no more sobering thought than that of our 
accountability for our unconscious influence. It is not 
to be supposed that Rachel deliberately determined to 
lead the household away from the worship of the true 
God. The young people, however, seeing where she put 
her trust, to what powers she turned in perplexity or dis- 
tress, followed her example. Thus all our lives are inter- 
locked as are the forest trees, where, if one falls, its fall 
crushes others. Take, for instance, the example of pub- 
lic worship on the Lord's Day. One young girl who 
goes regularly to the early celebration will lead others to 
the altar. One deaf old man who is always in church 
sets an example which deserves the highest commenda- 
tion. As he cannot hear a word it is known that he is 
present because he loves the Lord's house. Or take the 
example of a father, respected and respectable, of high 
standing, it may be, in the community, who desires his 
family to attend church yet goes not with them. His 
children see that the Church has no place in his affec- 
tions. As they grow older, the boys especially, follow 
in their father's footsteps and gradually become insensible 
to the claims of God. If we look at the men in any of 
our congregations to-day we shall find that the great 
majority of them are men whose fathers went to church 
before them. The young men who drop out of Sunday- 
school and forsake the Church are, with very few excep- 
tions, doing exactly as their fathers did at the same age. 
All this leads on to the consideration of the fact that 
the power of example continues after death. It is post- 



The Oak of Shechem. 161 

humous. The evil men do lives after them ; so does the 
good. We are all of us in many ways the inheritors of 
men and women long departed. What we are now will 
also tell upon a generation yet unborn. There is a 
legend that after the battle of Chalons the spirits of the 
slain soldiers continued the conflict for several days; 
and after we are in the grave the silent, invisible influ- 
ences we have brought into being will continue their 
battle for good or for evil. Theodore Parker uttered a 
true saying when he lay dying in Italy: " There are two 
Theodore Parkers; one of them is dying in Italy; 
the other is planted in America and will continue to 
live." Yes, we have an immortality here on the earth. 
So far from blotting us out, death often intensifies our 
personal influence. The remembrance of our faith and 
works is often more constraining than the sight of them. 

When Jacob was at length impelled to act, how, let us 
ask, did his family receive his godly admonition ? They 
obeyed without a murmur. " They gave unto Jacob all 
the strange gods which were in their hand and Jacob hid 
them," destroyed and buried them, " under the oak which 
was by Shechem." Let believing parents of to-day be 
encouraged by Jacob's success. Let them lovingly, 
firmly, call for the idols of their own households and 
bury them under some oak of Shechem. The promises 
of Holy Scripture are many for those who truly seek to 
bring up their households in the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord. " I will pour out my Spirit and my bless- 
ing," we read in the forty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, 

upon thine offspring; and they shall spring up as 
willows by the water-courses. One shall say, I am the 
Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name of 
Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto 



1 62 The Bartered Birthright. 

the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel." 
This is a beautiful picture of a Christian household. 
Would that it were true of all our families! Each one 
of us can do much to bring about such blessedness by 
faithfully following St. Paul's advice to his spiritual son 
Timothy: "Be thou an example of the believers, in 
word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in 
purity." 



BETHEL REVISITED. 

SATURDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, 
he and all the people that were with him." — Gen. xxxv. 6. 

IN revisiting Bethel after many years Jacob's heart 
overflows. The memory of God's goodness is very 
precious. Here in his youth, a homeless wanderer, he 
dreamed of heaven, and the vision never faded. Here 
God promised to be with him, to keep him, to give him 
bread to eat and raiment to put on, to bring him once 
more to his father's house in peace; here Jacob vowed, 
" The Lord shall be my God." 

" Who dreams of God when passionate youth is high, 
When first life's weary waste his feet have trod ? 
Who seeth angels' foot-falls in the sky, 

Working the works of God ? 
His sun shall fade as gently as it rose." 

Jacob acknowledged the faithfulness of the Lord, the 
promise-keeping God, and looked forward doubting not 
that the God of Bethel would still go with him, keep him, 
feed him, and bring him in peace to the grave and gate 
of death and to the Father's house beyond. 

For others Bethel might be only a bleak hillside ; to 
Jacob it was the holiest of shrines. To him its inanimate 
rocks and trees and springs were endowed with the power 
of speech. He assembled his household, related once 
more the story of his Ladder-vision, pointed out the 

163 



164 The Bartered Birthright. 

spot where his head rested when he was in dreams, and 
erected an altar which he dedicated with becoming 
solemnities. 

When Jacob told his children the meaning of Bethel, 
deeply moved by the sight of his emotion, they may have 
had thoughts which find expression in the lines of a 
living poet : 

" I saw the Syrian sunset's meteor crown 
Hang over Bethel for a little space ; 
I saw a gentle wanderer lie down 
With tears upon his face. 

" Sheer up the fathomless, transparent blue, 
Rose jasper battlements and crystal wall ; 
Rung all the night air pierced through and through 
With harps angelical. 

" And a great ladder was set up the while 

From earth to heaven, with angels on each round ; 
Barks that bore precious freight to earth's fair isle, 
Or sailed back homeward-bound." 

It is not difficult for us to imagine Jacob's own feelings 
upon his return to Bethel. There are places which hold 
records of our lives. Each one of us can point to houses, 
streets, streams, hills, or other inanimate objects that tell 
tales of what we have said and thought and done in their 
presence ; which are vocal though voiceless and have mar- 
vellous power to awaken memories of the past and are 
pleasurably or painfully suggestive according to the 
record we ourselves have made upon them. This is, 
perhaps, the explanation of the universal tendency to per- 
sonify everything around us. Children utter passionate 
words to stones or blocks or pieces of furniture from which 
they have received an injury, and strike them, as if these 



Bethel Revisited. 165 

things could hear and feel and respond. When children 
grow up and are about to leave their childhood's home 
for years, perhaps forever, they often move among the 
rooms and through the grounds, uttering farewells as 
though these silent and emotionless things could feel the 
sorrow of parting and could reply with some farewell of 
their own. Another illustration of this tendency to per- 
sonify the inanimate may be seen in the religions of the 
cultivated Greek and Roman civilizations, wherein the 
grander objects and phenomena of the universe are repre- 
sented as divinities, living and possessing human passions. 
In one form or another, in every land, everything with 
which humanity has had association has been pictured as 
making record of the association and somehow responding 
to the emotions of the human heart. Our blessed 
Saviour found this thought and habit among the people 
with whom He lived and labored while on earth, and in 
His sermons made the trees and fields and flowers vocal, 
leaving His earthly life impressed upon every place and 
thing which He approached. The hills, plains, valleys, 
towns, and waters of Palestine are to this day alive with 
the story of the Lord's earthly life. Bethlehem, Jerusa- 
lem, the Temple, the tomb of Lazarus, Jacob's well, the 
River Jordan, the Sea of Galilee, the brook of Kedron, 
Gethsemane, Calvary — all these speak of Christ and 
will continue forever to repeat the story of the events of 
which they were the silent witnesses. 

We, too, for our part, are writing our own history on 
the objects around us and among which we pass in the 
journey of life. Each life, each turning-point of life, can 
be connected with certain houses, schools, churches, or 
objects of the world of nature. A short list of the names 
of such things and places would give the outlines of your 



1 66 The Bartered Birthright. 

life and mine. Jacob's history could be condensed into 
less than a dozen words — Hebron, Bethel, Padan-aram, 
Gilead, Mahanaim, Peniel, Shechem, Ephrath, Dothan, 
the land of Goshen. 

What we want, then, is such an association with in- 
animate things that they shall utter words of hope and 
cheer to us whenever we revisit them. Doubtless Jacob 
tried to impress this lesson upon his household. His 
joy in revisiting Luz, which is Bethel, was undimmed by 
the remembrance of any sin committed there. There his 
sin was forgiven. There he saw the heavens opened. 
Of Bethel he could say : 

' ' But at Luz God came to me : in my heart 
He put a better mind, and showed me how, 
While we discern it not, and least believe, 
On stairs invisible betwixt His heaven 
And our unholy, sinful, toilsome earth 
Celestial messengers of loftiest good 
Upward and downward pass continually." 

What vivid impressions of the great experience which 
came to their father in his youth at Bethel Jacob's 
children must have received while he related it upon the 
very spot ! It may be that some of them lay down upon 
the stones that night hoping to see for themselves a 
similar vision. How often have we also longed for some 
vivid sight of the open heaven or for the sound of a voice 
from the eternal silences — and longed in vain ! The 
golden ladder did not lower again at Bethel. 

" Ah, many a time we 've looked, on star-light nights, 
Up to the skies as Jacob looked of old ; 
Looked longing up to those eternal lights 
To spell their lines of gold. 



Bethel Revisited. 167 

" But never more, as to that Hebrew boy, 
Each in his way the angels walk abroad ; 
And never more we hear, with awful joy, 
The audible voice of God." 

Still the same heavens are there, the same Father looks 
down and sends the same messengers of love upon like 
errands of love to all who look upward in faith. 

*' Yet to pure eyes that ladder still is set, 
And angel visitants still come and go ; 
Many bright messengers are moving yet 
In this dark world below. 

" Thoughts that are red-crossed Faith's out-spreading wings, 
Prayers of the Church, aye keeping time and tryst, 
Heart wishes, making bee-like murmurings, 
Their flower, the Eucharist." 

These and many other such like aspirations are the bur- 
dens of ascending angels, while other blessed messengers 
whom faith's eye " alone can scan " are ever descending 
from the throne of grace. 

When Jacob revisited Bethel he found that the place 
bore its imperishable record of his past. That fact he 
would be anxious to have his children apprehend. That 
lesson is for us also. The office, the shop, the mill, re- 
flect our work there. The chamber where we sleep, the 
streets we walk in, utter in our ears the loves, the pur- 
poses, the deeds, formed or wrought within them. The 
room where you joined in family prayer in childhood ; 
the altar before which you made your first communion ; 
the grave of your first-born; the place of business or 
pleasure where you resisted the grace of God ; the house 
in which you committed a deed of wrong or of shame, 
when fierce passions assailed you — each of us can point 



1 68 The Bartered Birthright. 

to some such place bearing our own life-records. Re- 
association with these scenes always brings the old 
memories back to life. Those memories will not die. 
They will go with us to the Seat of Judgment. 



THREE GRAVES. 

MONDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" But Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel 
under an oak." — Gen. xxxv. 8. 

"And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is 
Bethlehem." — Gen. xxxv. 19. 

"And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his 
people, being old and full of days : and his sons Esau and Jacob buried 
him." — Gen. xxxv. 29. 

AFFLICTION followed close upon Jacob's rededica- 
tion of his life to God at Bethel. He is now to be 
taught that sorrow purifies and refines the soul. The 
higher life he longs for is to be won only at the cost of 
tears. He too must be enabled to count it among his 
foremost spiritual blessings that his " heart has bled." 
' Many secrets of religion," says Jeremy Taylor, " are 
not perceived until they be felt, and are not felt but in 
the day of a great calamity." Longfellow said, " It has 
done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and 
drenched by the rain of life." Horace Bushnell could 
write, " I have learned more of experimental religion 
since my little boy died than in all my life before." The 
three deaths recorded in the chapter before us to-day 
brought home to Jacob some of these holy lessons. 

But we are not for a moment to suppose that Jacob's 
loved ones were taken from him to purify Jacob's soul. 
That would be a horrible thought. If Jacob had believed 
that, his loss would have been a curse and not a blessing. 
In that case his dear ones would have been dealt with 

169 



i jo The Bartered Birthright. 

arbitrarily, unjustly. No ; God did not take them to help 
Jacob become a better man nor because Jacob loved them 
too dearly. Two of the deaths took place in advanced 
age and were in the course of nature; the other we can- 
not explain, for Rachel died suddenly and in her youth 
— could we explain it we should be as God, and there 
would be no room for faith, or even for prayer; but we 
may rest assured that God, who knows the end from the 
beginning, dealt generously, lovingly, with Rachel; that 
in the wisdom and will of God her time had come. 
Nevertheless, it was a gracious Providence which called 
Jacob to meet affliction at a season when he was in a state 
of grace, fortified by high resolves, far more equal to mak- 
ing such submission to the will of God than ever before 
in the whole course of his life, and also at a period in his 
career in which the softening influences of a great grief 
could accomplish most effectually their blessed work upon 
his heart and mind. We are told that our Lord learned 
obedience by the things which He suffered. In Passion 
Week our attention is directed towards that supreme 
grief which purchased our salvation. The story before 
us of a human heart wrung by an anguish God-given be- 
fits the week and may help us to penetrate some little 
way into the mystery of those Divine sufferings which 
were at the same time most truly human and common to 
man. 

Jacob was first called upon to mourn for Deborah, his 
mother's nurse. When his mother, Rebekah, came as a 
bride to the Holy Land, faithful Deborah, who had 
suckled her in infancy, accompanied the bride and re- 
mained a member of the household so long as her mis- 
tress lived. When Rebekah died this warm-hearted old 
woman made her way somehow across the desert wilds to 



Three Graves. 171 

find a refuge with the son whom the mother loved and 
trusted. It is one of the highest compliments Jacob ever 
received, an unexpected revelation of his kindness and 
sympathy and of his power to inspire confidence in those 
who knew him best, that this shrewd and loving old nurse 
turned to him, not to his father, Isaac, nor to his brother, 
Esau, in her helpless old age to seek a protector and a 
home. In fact Jacob was ever trusted by women, trusted 
more than loved, for intellectual strength is not in itself 
lovable, and when joined to spiritual insight seldom 
awakens passionate attachments. Neither did any woman 
ever have cause to reproach Jacob or ever receive at his 
hands other than the most courteous and chivalrous 
treatment. 

Deborah, the old nurse, served her people for love, not 
for pay ; she was rewarded, it is pleasant to read, according 
to her merit. In this country such relationships are rare. 
Schoolhouses, electric lights, hotels, are unfavorable to 
the growth of these lifelong attachments which are 
equally honorable to the household and to the de- 
pendant. Where it is possible to retain such a faithful 
old heart in the home it is a great loss surely, a great sin 
probably, to break the tie which has strengthened itself 
in the memories of the years. Under the " Oak of weep- 
ing " Jacob buried Deborah at Bethel ; and his home was 
never quite the same again. Her " wise and happy old 
face " would greet him no more upon his return from the 
cares and labors of the day ; there was no one else who 
" called him by the pet name of childhood; " and Jacob 
wept for a true friend as well as for the faithful old nurse 
who had cheerfully given her life's affectionate service to 
his family. 

Soon afterwards Jacob departed from Bethel to visit 



172 The Bartered Birthright. 

his father Isaac, and on the journey Rachel, the light 
and joy of his life, was taken from him. She who had 
said, " Give me children, or I die," is now to know " the 
misery of a granted prayer. " As her ' ' soul was departing" 
she named her new-born son " Ben-o-ni, the son of my 
sorrow," but Jacob, for her encouragement, and because 
he would not give up hope while there was life, called 
him " Benjamin, the son of my right hand." The narra- 
tive lingers not, the fatal words are written, "And Rachel 
died." Jacob buried his beautiful and beloved wife where 
she died, in Bethlehem Ephrath, and her grave is known 
to this day. 

" And Israel looked upon his Rachel wanned, 

Like a white flower beneath long summer rain, 
So she with sweat of child-birth her thin hand 
Laid on the counterpane. 

" Near Ephrath there 's a pillared tomb apart ; 
It casts a shadow o'er her where she lies 
As she a shadow o'er her husband's heart 
Of household memories." 

Rachel is ever spoken of as the mother of the chosen 
people, and typical of the Church, the Bride of Christ. 
She was buried apart from other members of the family 
in Bethlehem where Christ, the true Israelite, was born ; 
and there in her grave she is represented as weeping for 
her children, the Holy Innocents, who were slain for 
Christ's dear sake. Jacob restrained his grief, bore it 
manfully, and in faith, but his heart was broken. The 
story of his constant love for Rachel is one of the most 
beautiful things in all literature. 

" For ne'er was wife, poor Rachel ! loved like thee." 



Three Graves. 173 

In his daily occupations and companionships the chief- 
tain of the tribe, silent, alert, masterful, ready for any 
emergency, would have shown no outward evidence of 
the romance which illumined his inner life. But the 
poetry and the ideals of life he found in Rachel. His 
love came to him at first sight. The fourteen years of 
toil seemed short because of it. It grew with the years 
and never wavered. When he was dying, half a century 
later on, her name was on his lips: " I lost her; as I was 
in the way she left me." For the time he forgets all else 
and couples her name with the name of God : " I remem- 
ber God, and I remember Rachel that died." As has 
been said many times, Jacob's visions at Bethel and at 
Peniel, together with this pure, constant, unselfish love 
for Rachel, connect him with all that is highest and 
noblest in the experiences of the human race. 

The death of Isaac, Jacob's father, is also recorded 
in this chapter. He lived for some time after Jacob 
reached his home; and his closing years were comforted 
by the presence and care of his descendants, his faith 
strengthened by Jacob's conversation, his riches, and his 
twelve sons, the future heads of the Twelve Tribes of 
Israel. Esau was summoned to his death-bed, and the 
twin sons, reconciled and dutiful, followed Isaac to the 
grave. 

Henceforth Jacob looked beyond the stars not only for 
his God and the angels of God, but also for his own loved 
ones. Earth held his chief treasure no longer. Where 
his treasure was there his heart turned more and more. 
We too have sorrowed. We too have loved ones we 
have lost awhile. Let us not forget them. In shame 
we sometimes feel that we are neglectful of them. The 
blessed doctrine of the Communion of Saints is too little 



174 The Bartered Birthright. 

known or accepted. In our prayers and meditations we 
should call up the faces of our dead. The thought of 
them will shield us from temptation and help us to set 
our affections on things above. 



THE SALE OF JOSEPH. 

TUESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to 
the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver : and they brought Joseph into 
Egypt." — Gen. xxxvii. 28. 

IN most lives there are long years of peace and suffi- 
ciency. After Isaac's death Jacob succeeded his 
father as the recognized head of the chosen family ; his 
earthly ambitions were realized and he lived in peace 
with God and man. The sale of Joseph by his brothers, 
related in the text, broke the even tenor of these un- 
eventful years and exercised a powerful influence upon 
the future destinies of Jacob and the Jewish race. To- 
day we are to consider the providences by which Joseph 
was sold into Egypt. 

It was providential, that is certain ; a providence long 
prepared, carefully worked out, and, although using the 
evil of men's hearts as its instrument, in the end a blessed 
providence. Joseph was sent into Egypt in order to pre- 
pare the way for the migration thither of all his father's 
household. But why, in the Divine purposes, was this 
change of habitation desirable ? Religious writers have 
given two answers. First, Jacob's family, increasing so 
rapidly in wealth and numbers — ceasing to be a family, 
becoming a tribe, a large and powerful tribe — could no 
longer remain in safety in the Holy Land. Too weak to 
conquer the land, in a collision with the fierce and 
heathen natives, Jacob's family would be exterminated. 

i75 



176 The Bartered Birthright. 

And such a conflict was imminent. In Egypt the tribe 
could grow into twelve tribes, into a nation, separate, un- 
contaminated, under the protection of a friendly monarch. 
There was another reason for the sojourn in Egypt. From 
the highest civilization of the ancient world with its re- 
finements and proprieties and laws, its schools of science 
and of art, its manufactures and mechanics, these untaught 
plainsmen would acquire much which would go into the 
entire warp and woof of the future Jewish nation. And 
Joseph was the man chosen and sent before them. In 
the familiar story of this destined one's entrance into 
Egypt and his career there we are able to trace God's 
own thought and purpose. 

Jacob's favoritism was the chief thing which turned 
the brothers against Joseph. It has been conjectured 
that in manner and appearance the lad " was a perfect 
picture of his mother Rachel." We are told that 
" Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, and 
made him a coat of many colors." There is some dis- 
agreement as to the meaning of the word translated 
" coat of many colors," and scholars have been disposed 
to rob us of our childhood's picture of Joseph arrayed in 
his rainbow-hued coat and to substitute in his place a 
youth clad in a priestly tunic of white, or in a long flow- 
ing garment also white, reaching to his hands and feet. 
Recent researches and discoveries, however, as in so 
many other instances, have led to a return to the old 
rendering, and " coat of many colors " is now generally 
accepted as admissible, probably preferable. This coat, 
a garment such as was generally worn " by the ruling 
classes, by those who had not to work with their hands," 
indicated that his father had chosen Joseph to be the 
future chieftain of the tribe. For this reason his brothers 



The Sale of Joseph. 177 

" hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him." 
They hated him also because he told tales of their 
misdoings; although we may suppose that he only 
answered his father's questions and told the truth. 
And they hated him yet more because of his dreams, 
afterwards fulfilled to the letter: " I have dreamed," he 
said, " that we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, 
my sheaf arose and also stood upright ; and behold, your 
sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my 
sheaf." Again he dreamed that " the sun and the moon 
and the eleven stars made obeisance unto him." This 
increased his brethren's hatred and envy; " but his father 
observed the saying." 

Joseph hated, the next act in the tragedy opens. One 
day his father sent him to visit his brothers who were 
feeding the flock in Shechem, and when they saw him 
coming over the hills they conspired against him, saying 
one to another, " Come let us slay him, and we shall see 
what will become of his dreams!" Reuben, the first- 
born, probably in command, was the only one who did 
not in his heart consent to the murder. He urged them 
not to kill the lad, but rather cast him into an empty 
cistern and let him die, — intending to rescue him " and 
deliver him to his father again." It was agreed. When 
Joseph drew near they seized him, stripped him of his 
many-colored coat, and cast him into the pit. He was 
but seventeen years old, helpless in the hands of ten 
grown men. The deed done, they sat down near the 
mouth of the pit and ate and drank, feasting perhaps on 
the dainties their innocent victim had brought them as 
a present from home. Reuben soon withdrew to attend 
to some duty of the day or to devise a plan of rescue. 
During his absence a caravan of merchantmen was seen 



178 The Bartered Birthright. 

approaching, and Judah made the suggestion that they 
should sell the dreamer as a slave ; the pit was opened, the 
captive drawn out and sold for twenty pieces of silver — 
two for each brother, — the usual price of a slave under 
age, thirty pieces being the value of a full-grown man. 
When their guiltless victim was led away into a cruel 
slavery had they baffled his dreams ? On the contrary, 
they were helping to bring them to pass. 

In the evening, wavering, unstable Reuben stealthily 
visited the pit and found it empty. He took it for 
granted that the ten had slain Joseph and concealed the 
body. Reuben received no portion of the twenty pieces 
of silver, did not know of the sale, and believed that his 
brother was dead. 

" Sold by them that should have loved thee, 

Wearing graciously thy glory 
Through the land thy wisdom won ; 

How should Christians read thy story, 
Aged Israel's favored son ? " 

Can we fail to read in it of Him, beloved of the Father, 
whose brethren said, "This is the heir, come let us kill 
Him;" whose "own received Him not;" delivered for 
the price of a slave ; rising from the pit to the throne ; 
whose Passion won for brethren who hated Him deliver- 
ance and a " better country ? " 

The coat of many colors was dipped in blood and car- 
ried home to Jacob, who " knew it, and said, It is my 
son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him." 

We know why Joseph was sold into Egypt. There 
are other important lessons in the narrative. Jacob be- 
lieving his son dead, sorrowing for the vacant place in his 
home, acknowledges that he is being punished for the 



The Sale of Joseph. 179 

sins of the past. He who had deceived his father is now 
deceived by his own sons. Those who make light of sin, 
think it easily forgiven, its consequences not to be feared, 
can glean no encouragement for their assumption from 
Jacob's history. 

But the discipline of the parting was good both for the 
father and for the son. It made a man of Joseph. In his 
father's house he was in grave danger of being spoilt by 
favoritism ; in Egypt he was forced to depend upon him- 
self; it was sink or swim; the anguish, the temptation, 
and the toil strengthened his moral nature, sharpened his 
ambition; and in Egypt he reached far higher earthly 
honors and gained far profounder religious experiences 
and attainments than ever would have been possible in 
his own land. 

The loss was also good for Jacob. Taking his trouble 
to God he would be taught that this grief was not only a 
chastisement for sin but also the answer to earnest prayer 
for higher spiritual privileges and acquirements. Do you 
sometimes long for the saintly life as Jacob did just be- 
fore his loss ? Do you sometimes pray to be made a 
better Christian ? That may be a dangerous longing and 
a perilous prayer. For some of us the furnace of affliction 
might be the only possible answer. 

Jacob, let us also remember, was a student of the ways 
of God as well as of the ways of men. He would say to 
himself, " Either all is chance, and, if only chance, un- 
worthy of a man's grief, too insignificant to set this keen 
old brain of mine at work upon ; or else God is, and reigns, 
and all is well. If God is on the throne, whatever hap- 
pens to Joseph, whatever the pain of my own heart, the 
ordering must be just and right, designed for good, con- 
sequently endurable." Thus to the true believer days of 



180 The Bartered Birthright. 

darkness are growing days. And so God gives us tears. 
To submit to the dispensations of Providence is the evi- 
dence of our faith in God and in His love. Benjamin 
Franklin, near the end of his long, eventful life, more or 
less under the influence of French infidelity, said : " The 
longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this 
truth that God governs in the affairs of men." Jacob 
and Joseph, when they met again in the palace of the 
Egyptian King, could say that, could say furthermore, 
" now we know that all things work together for good to 
them that love God." 



THE FAMINE-TIME. 

WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my 
children : Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin 
away : all these things are against me." — Gen. xlii. 36. 

IN the sorest of the famine-time Jacob murmured. In 
his dejection he lost his faith. Although he was be- 
coming an old man his complaints are not to be excused 
as merely the querulousness of old age. His mind was 
clear, his eye undimmed, his reign over his tribe su- 
preme. Such strong old men rule the world ; always 
have; always will. That Jacob was not in his dotage 
appears from his manner of meeting the famine when 
first the dearth fell upon the land. His sons, grown 
men, with families of their own, folded their hands and 
waited either for rain or for death. But Jacob was ready 
for action. He did not know that the famine was an 
ordained agent to bring him to Joseph and the land of 
Goshen ; therefore he would fight the famine. In his 
staunch old heart he was so far from regarding the situa- 
tion as hopeless that in the confidence of his own resources 
he addressed his sons with a sarcastic gentleness : " There 
is corn in Egypt; I have money; you have youthful 
strength for the journey; go and buy; ' Why look ye 
one upon another' in despair?" It is clear that the 
old man's brain is not senile, and that he " has been 
eying this condition of incompetency and cowardice on 
the part of his sons with some curiosity and with some 

181 



1 82 The Bartered Birthright. 

contempt and now breaks in upon it with his ' Why look 
ye one upon another ? ' It is the old Jacob, full of re- 
sources, prompt and imperturbable, equal to every turn 
of fortune, and never knowing how to yield." 

From childhood we have all known the story of the 
journey of the brothers into Egypt; of their meeting 
with Joseph, who instantly recognized them, although 
they knew him not, arrayed in splendor and grown to 
manhood; of Joseph's eager inquiries for his father and 
little Benjamin his mother's son; and of his order that 
no more corn should be sold them if they failed to bring 
Benjamin with them when they came again. In the text 
we are told that upon their return with the message 
Jacob's heart sank. He did not believe them. He was 
troubled with many thoughts. After Joseph was lost the 
patriarch turned to Benjamin, Rachel's other son, and he 
made him the favorite. Notice, in passing, that the 
brothers gained nothing by their sin against Joseph. 
They disposed of one favorite, the object of their hatred 
and envy, only to find another and less acceptable " little 
ruler " set up in his place. 

Jacob had seen famine-time before. It may be he 
hoped the present supplies would hold out until rain fell; 
but day after day dragged on ; the dearth and drought 
grew worse and worse ; the corn of Egypt was consumed ; 
the cattle were dying, his grandchildren crying for bread. 
Must Benjamin go ? Then it was that Jacob's faith failed. 
God had forgotten to be gracious. For the first time in 
his life murmurs, murmurs of despondency and doubt, 
framed themselves upon lips that were wont to utter pre- 
vailing prayer. His sons urged him to let Benjamin go. 
But he would not yield. " My son," he replied, " shall 
not go down with you ; for his brother is dead, and he is 



The Famine-Time. 183 

left alone ; if mischief befall him by the way in which ye 
go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow 
to the grave." Notice also the injustice and petulancy 
of his rebuke to Judah: " Wherefore dealt ye so ill with 
me as to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother ? " 
To all the brothers he uttered the lament of the text : 
11 Me have ye bereaved of my children; Joseph is not, 
and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: All 
these things are against me." We are not told that he 
prayed for guidance or even for deliverance. His faith 
had failed. At length, however, he was forced to act, 
and yielding to Judah's plea, and placing this son of 
Leah in command, he said, " Take Benjamin, ' Arise and 
go unto the man ' and buy more corn." 

In Jacob's despairing cry, "All these things are against 
me," we may hear the expression of our own faithless- 
ness in seasons of depression, worry, or doubt, and the 
rebuke it receives. All these things were really for him, 
not against him. The saying was false. Joseph was 
alive, ruling in Egypt. Simeon was safe with his 
brother. No evil should befall little Benjamin. The 
famine was his friend, not his foe; it was designed to 
force him away from Canaan and its dangers into the 
safety of Goshen by the Nile bank. All these things 
were working together for his good. But he knew it 
not, believed it not; therefore he worried, complained, 
despaired. If he has endured many chastisements and 
tribulations in the past this is the culmination of them 
all, for now he finds no help in his God. We can im- 
agine his forlorn condition. All his sons are absent and 
in danger. During weary days and weeks he waits, 
watches, and suffers, " a prey to fears, suspicions, sur- 
mises." There were no postmen, no telegraph wires. 



184 The Bartered Birthright. 

And he found no help in looking upward. In losing 
faith for the time being in the goodness of God he ex- 
perienced in all its bitterness the misery of hope deferred 
as he waited, imagining and conjuring up misfortunes the 
direst, torturing himself with weary worryings. 

St. Paul exhorted the Philippians, " Be careful for 
nothing " — Be full of care for nothing; or, more literally, 
In nothing be anxious. That is to say, " Do not fret or 
worry or borrow trouble. Don't cross the bridge before 
you come to it. Live by the day. Trust God for the 
morrow. ' Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' '* 
Yet we worry and at seasons fail to see God's love and 
care for us in our distress. In Jacob such a state of mind 
indicated a fall from grace ; and to this day it is, in all 
who give way to it, an unfailing evidence of spiritual 
declension. 

' ' All things are against me and worse will come. ' ' This 
is the general form of the disease. In foreboding fears 
we look forward, anxiously anticipating some evil day, 
some insurmountable difficulty, some overwhelming ca- 
lamity — we know not what. These galling and needless 
self-tortures canker and as they grow eat out the life of 
faith. How true is the old saying that the misfortunes 
hardest to bear are those which never happen ! Never- 
theless, we worry, although we know that the worrying 
does no good, and that it is the deadliest foe of human 
happiness and usefulness. 

In thinking of our circumstances we often fall into de- 
jection. ' ' If we had this or that ; if things were different ! " 
Those who have property worry for fear of losing it; 
those who have none fear that they may come to want. 
We worry on our children's account, over their present 
and their future, and our disquietude is accepted by them 



The Famine-Time. 185 

either with amusement or with anger, rarely with grati- 
tude. We worry, too, over our health. The patent 
medicine advertisements which describe symptoms are 
far more eagerly and widely read than the novels of the 
season. Our aches and pains, our prospects of an early 
grave — these form an unfailing and fascinating subject 
of conversation, when we can secure a hearer. To take 
care of our health is undoubtedly a Christian duty; to 
worry about it, to think of it constantly, is the surest 
way to break ourselves down. No slave of worry lives 
long. Jacob shortened his life by this folly and died a 
quarter of a century younger than Isaac, his calm, even- 
tempered father. It is worry, not work, that kills. 

Then, too, anxiety turns inward and we worry about our 
religious state and standing. Sometimes we say, " I won- 
der if I am a true Christian ? I long to know by some 
sure sign or proof, ' Do I love the Lord or no ? ' ' And 
such evidence not being granted, we anxiously ask, "Am 
I His, or am I not ? " More frequently we question the 
love of God. Jacob felt that the Lord had forsaken him. 
There are problems in our life and in the life of the world 
we cannot solve. How can God love us when He per- 
mits the evil, the pain, the inequalities, the injustices we 
see on every hand ? How can we know that God is, 
hears us, loves us ? What are the proofs of life beyond 
the grave ? In Jacob's case, because we know the end 
of God's plan for him, we can say that he should have 
prayed, put his trust in God, taken his mind off himself 
and his perplexities, busied himself with the work of his 
plantation, leaving the issue with the Almighty. In our 
own anxieties we have these resources and more; for 
Jacob had not, as we have, the assurances of Him who 
is the revelation and the representative of the Father. 



1 86 The Bartered Birthright. 

The word and the promise of Jesus Christ should sup- 
port our faith. Mere human philosophers at the best 
can only tell us " not to put on our cloaks in mid- 
summer because we may need them at Christmas." 
But we believe that Jesus Christ once lived upon earth 
and that we have His words. The difference between His 
utterances and the wisdom of all other philosophers is so 
marked that He is everywhere acknowledged as a master. 
Were He only a man there is every reason why we should 
accept His words. We yield to authority in art, science, 
surgery, mechanics. In His sphere He is the recognized 
authority. And He said, over and over again, that there 
is a future life for man ; that God, who cares for the birds 
and feeds them and provides raiment for the lilies, will 
much more care for His own children, made in His own 
image; and His constant question of rebuke was, " How 
is it that ye have no faith ? " — no faith in the goodness 
and power of God, no faith in an eternity so soon to 
come, wherein all wrongs will be redressed, all tears 
dried. But He was God as well as man, proving His 
Divinity by His works, by His Cross and Passion, by 
His glorious Resurrection from the dead. To lack faith 
in Him and His repeated assurances that God loves and 
cares for us, that trials and difficulties are evidences of 
His love, is inexcusable. 

In due time Jacob discovered that all these tribulations 
were for him and not against him. Let Passion Week 
be at once the rebuke of our faithless worries and their 
cure. 



THE WAGONS OF EGYPT. 

THURSDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" And when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the 
spirit of Jacob their father revived : And Israel said, It is enough ; Joseph 
my son is yet alive : I will go and see him before I die." — Gen. xlv. 27, 28. 

IN famine-time Jacob lost faith in the loving-kindness 
of the Lord. He felt that God was against him, and 
his faithlessness found expression in the language of de- 
spair. Little Benjamin and all his sons on the long and 
dangerous journey for the corn of Egypt — the old man 
brooded in solitary sadness, seeing no smiling face behind 
this " frowning providence." In the narrative before 
us to-day we learn how Jacob recovered his lost faith and 
found his lost son Joseph. 

1. One morning the old chieftain is awakened from 
his stupor of gloomy foreboding by the announcement 
that his sons are returning from their long journey. 
He receives them in his chamber; eagerly he embraces 
little Benjamin; anxiously he counts over the names of 
the ten. They are there, all safe and well. Corn is in 
their sacks and on their faces the light of a great joy. 
As best they can they break the joyful tidings: " Joseph 
is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of 
Egypt." When he heard their words " Jacob's heart 
fainted " — his heart grew chill or seemed to cease its 
beating, " for he believed them not." More than once in 
the past these sons had deceived him and now he natur- 
ally suspects another falsehood. The brothers go over 

187 



1 88 The Bartered Birthright. 

the details of their story. They speak of Joseph's royal 
rank and rule. They rehearse his words. Especially 
would they dwell upon the fact that he had forgiven 
them for selling him. Joseph said, they all declare, 
" Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold 
me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve 
life. It was not you that sent me hither but God." 

Jacob still refused to believe them. Then they would 
show the presents Joseph had given them and sent to 
him; with childish delight Benjamin would exhibit his 
" three hundred pieces of silver " and his " five changes 
of raiment." The money and the fine clothes making 
some impression, the brothers besought their father to 
come to the door and see the chariots of Egypt. Yield- 
ing to their entreaties he left his chamber, and, in the 
artless and pathetic words of the Scripture, " when he 
saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the 
spirit of Jacob their father revived." The numbness and 
coldness left his heart, " and Israel said," for with his 
awakening faith his new name is restored to him again, 
"It is enough! Joseph my son is yet alive; I will go 
down and see him before I die." 

When Jacob saw the wagons of Egypt his faith re- 
vived. So to-day there are many who find in the objec- 
tive proofs of religion great aids to faith. An answered 
prayer, poetical justice upon an evil-doer, a special provi- 
dence, the outward and visible signs of the sacraments — 
these are encouragements to believe in God. And to 
each of us come many marks and tokens of another 
country, conveyances not of this world's manufacture, 
proofs of the existence and love of a Ruler in that land. 

2. Losing no time, " Israel took his journey with all 
that he had." No sooner were his doubts of God 



The Wagons of Egypt. 189 

dispelled than his mind resumed its wonted activity. As 
he journeyed he thought of the unsearchable wisdom 
which had brought these strange things to pass, and he 
realized, as he had not at first, that this journey into 
Egypt was a momentous undertaking and would be 
fraught with unending consequences. His longing to 
see Joseph was intense. But Canaan was the Holy Land ; 
Egypt was a land of idols; there, too, he might become 
a subject and be no more a prince. Therefore, when he 
reached Beersheba on the very borders of the great desert, 
the last halting place in the Promised Land, while it was 
yet possible to return, he acted the part of Israel and 
sought an interview with his Divine Friend. He offered 
sacrifices, asked forgiveness for his season of distrust, re- 
turned thanks for the preservation of Joseph, and be- 
sought guidance for the future. Whenever the believer 
earnestly sets himself to the work of praying that his duty 
may be made clear, light falls upon his pathway. It was 
so with Jacob. He received a definite and gracious an- 
swer: " In the visions of the night " he seemed to hear 
a voice saying, " Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I 
will there make of thee a great nation : I will go down 
with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee 
up again : and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine 
eyes," shall close thine eyes in death. All doubts being 
thus removed the caravan proceeded on the journey. 

3. At this point in the narrative we are given a list of 
the names and numbers of Jacob's household. His com- 
pany consisted of twelve sons and seventy souls, thus 
reminding us of the twelve Apostles and seventy disciples 
sent forth by Jesus Christ. The ancient commentators 
remark that Jacob's household at once began to increase 
almost miraculously, and was, in this growth, prophetic 



190 The Bartered Birthright. 

of the increase of the Twelve and the Seventy, the 
Christian Church, sent from the Holy Land into the 
heathen world. In each instance the grain of mustard 
seed became a mighty tree. Of the literal Israel Moses 
said in his day, " Thy fathers went down into Egypt 
with three score and ten persons, and now the Lord thy 
God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multi- 
tude/' Of the spiritual Israel, soon after its work began, 
we read in the book of Acts that there were " three 
thousand believers," and again of " many thousands of 
Jews that believed ;" while at the end of the second 
century Tertullian declared, " We have filled the world." 

4. In due time the travellers approach the capital city 
of Egypt. The old leader, remembering his duty to his 
followers, restrains his impulsive eagerness for the sight 
of Joseph's face, calls a halt, and acts with his accus- 
tomed prudence and caution. The famine has reduced 
him to poverty ; he comes, virtually, as a suppliant ; but 
he will make no needless confession of weakness. He 
assumes the attitude of a prince who is accepting the in- 
vitation of another prince. With all the state possible 
he sends forward Judah to notify Joseph and Pharaoh of 
his arrival and then awaits, as an equal, the honors of a 
courteous welcome. It was well done. To have ad- 
vanced unheralded through the streets of a foreign city 
would have been unsafe and undignified. The description 
of the meeting of father and son after the cruel separation 
of twenty-two years is beyond comment. " And Joseph 
made ready his chariot and went up to meet Israel his 
father — and he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a 
good while." 

5. The story of Joseph, while but an episode in the 
history of his greater father, nevertheless in its record of 



The Wagons of Egypt. 191 

the providential opening of the land of Egypt contains 
much to strengthen our faith. The chapters which nar- 
rate the career of Joseph in the ancient metropolis of the 
world introduce many Egyptian words and phrases into 
the Hebrew Scripture and abound in allusions to the 
social and political customs of that country at a specified 
period in its history. Now, modern students are digging 
up the old capital and have deciphered many of the 
writings on its bricks and stones. These Egyptologists, 
many of them, hold no brief for the Bible, yet they ad- 
mit that its references and allusions in these chapters are 
correct. Furthermore, they tell the German school of 
critics, which rejects the Mosaic authorship and assigns 
the narrative to the time of the kings of Israel, or later, 
that these words and phrases do not fit the date they 
have surmised. The precise date of the document, or its 
authorship, could never be a vital matter to any well- 
instructed Churchman. Our attitude toward all such 
questions should be one of frank desire for the truth. 
We do not fear facts. We welcome truth and seek the 
light. The Creeds of the Church leave us free to accept 
all discoveries of modern science, study, or research. 
But the truth is that the scholars who are digging into 
the remains of ancient Egypt find much to corroborate 
the traditional or accepted view of the date and author- 
ship of the chapters before us, nothing to render that 
view untenable. 

Another help to faith is the designed or undesigned 
likeness of Joseph to Jesus Christ. It is not necessary to 
assert that the old writer was conscious, or fully con- 
scious, of that resemblance; but we can see it in its 
beauty and we are edified by it. Take one point only in 
that likeness. Let us see how Joseph, feeding his breth- 



192 The Bartered Birthright. 

ren in famine-time, shadows out the gifts of the Lord 
Jesus Christ in the Holy Communion. Pharaoh gave 
Joseph an Egyptian name, " Zaphnath-paaneah," mean- 
ing " The Saviour of the World," or " The Bread of 
Life/' He to whom this name was given fed his breth- 
ren at his own table in his own house; He who is the 
true Bread of Life feeds us with the bread and wine of 
His own sacrament in His own house, and we sup with 
Him and He with us. Joseph also gave his brethren pro- 
visions for the way; our Joseph says to us, " Strengthen 
yourselves with the Bread of Life now whilst you are in 
the way; arise and eat of My flesh and drink of My 
blood, because the journey is too great for thee." In 
Goshen also he fed and nourished them, thus reminding 
us of that true land of Goshen wherein the Lord Jesus 
Christ feeds His brethren at the Marriage Supper of the 
Lamb and reveals Himself to them face to face. 

Let us remember, too, that while the bread of old 
which Joseph gave his brethren, like the manna, nour- 
ished only for a season and had no promise of the life to 
come, the Body and Blood of the Lord on Christian altars 
has in it the seed of immortality, according to the most 
sure promise of the Lord: " This is the bread which 
cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof 
and not die ; if any man eateth of this bread he shall live 
forever." 



THE LAND OF GOSHEN. 

FRIDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren 
are come unto thee : The land of Egypt is before thee ; in the best of the 
land make thy father and brethren to dwell ; in the land of Goshen let 
them dwell." — Gen. xlvii. 5, 6. 

THE Pharaoh of Joseph's time is set before us in a 
most attractive light. He is represented as a strong 
man, honorable and generous, a wise ruler, a King who 
believed in his own religion and sought to govern his life 
by its precepts. It was a gracious Providence which 
placed the future fate of Jacob's family at the disposal 
of such a monarch, for he was willing to give them the 
best of the land. 

In the passage before us for our exposition to-day, the 
forty-seventh and the forty-eighth chapters of Genesis, 
we have an account of Jacob's interview with Pharaoh in 
the King's palace, a brief record of the settlement of the 
chosen family in the land of Goshen, and then we are 
told of the blessing which the patriarch bestowed upon 
the two sons of Joseph. Let us follow these three 
natural divisions of the narrative. 

I. Tradition has designated the Pharaoh before whom 
Jacob appeared as " Apepi, the last great King of the 
Hyksos dynasty," and this identification is accepted by 
Canon Rawlinson and other authorities. When he signi- 
fied his readiness to give Jacob audience, Apepi was sur- 
rounded by princes and courtiers and royal guards. At 

*3 

193 



194 The Bartered Birthright. 

the signal Joseph, the Grand Vizier, magnificently ap- 
parelled, as became the " Governor over the land," 
advanced towards the throne escorting his father through 
the double rows of guards. The old man probably re- 
tained the simple dress of his native hills but he bore 
himself with " all the dignity of a Great Sheikh whom 
no outward display of courtly grandeur could discon- 
cert. ' ' As he walked by Joseph's side he may have said to 
himself, " Would that Rachel were here, if but for a mo- 
ment, to witness her Joseph's greatness." The old chief- 
tain must have been gratified by his reception and dazzled 
by the magnificence of the scene, but he gave no outward 
sign of the impression made upon him. With perfect 
self-possession he stood before the greatest King of the 
age. The Prince of the world and the Prince of God 
were face to face ! The things seen and temporal and the 
things not seen and eternal had here their living repre- 
sentatives. Joseph intended to manage the interview. 
Doubtless he expected that his father, according to the 
usage of the court, would prostrate himself before the 
throne, receive a royal greeting, and at once withdraw. 
The Psalmist tells us that Joseph bound the Egyptian 
princes at his pleasure and taught their senators wisdom. 
We know that he was a shrewd politician as well as a far- 
seeing statesman and that he was now in the prime of all 
his powers. But Jacob waves aside his distinguished son. 
He himself is the great man of the company. He stands 
erect. He has no prostration to make. On the con- 
trary, he raises his hand to bless Pharaoh as the less is 
blessed of the better. Thus the old hero, conscious of 
his own greatness, calmly assumes the superiority. And 
the chief prince of the world humbles himself before this 
strong old man of God. As a modern preacher has said, 



The Land of Goshen. 195 

a " spiritual grandeur invested this aged and weary pil- 
grim, and drew the likeness of a crown around his brow 
as he stood before the Egyptian King. Aged he was, 
and bowed, and sad, and weary. He halted, too, as one 
who has been sore wounded in the battle of life." There 
were furrows on his brow, and lines in his cheek, " elo- 
quent of tears and cares," while the intellectual light 
upon his face was somewhat dimmed by the shadows of 
a suffering life. As a prince having power with God and 
man Jacob stood before Apepi and prevailed. The King 
recognized the patriarch's spiritual power, accepted his 
blessing, and graciously entered into conversation with 
him. " And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art 
thou ? " Jacob replied, " The days of the years of my 
pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years : few and evil 
have the days of the years of my life been." The nar- 
rative does not continue the conversation. We must as- 
sume, however, that there followed some discussion of 
the terms upon which Jacob's family should settle in the 
land of Goshen and a final ratification of those terms. 
Once more Jacob blessed the King, and, leaning upon 
Joseph's arm, left the throne-room with a heart over- 
flowing with gratitude and triumph. 

2. After Pharaoh's consent had been secured we are 
told that Joseph settled his father and his brothers in the 
fertile and well-watered land of Goshen. " And Israel 
dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen ; 
and they had possessions therein, and grew, and multi- 
plied exceedingly." The narrative is also careful to state 
that Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, 
and we remember that Joseph was just seventeen when 
he was sold away from his father. Thus Joseph nour- 
ished and protected his father in his old age through as 



ig6 The Bartered Birthright. 

many years as his father had cared for him in his child- 
hood. In many respects the closing years of Jacob's life 
were his best and happiest years. His children were 
around him and his peace was made with God and man. 
In the land of Goshen something must have come to 
him of that conviction to which a great English writer, 
J. R. Green, has given expression: " What seems to 
grow fairer to me as life goes by is the love and grace and 
tenderness of it — not its wit and cleverness and grandeur 
and knowledge, grand as knowledge is; but just the 
laughter of little children, and the friendships of friends, 
and the cosy talk by the fireside, and the sight of flowers, 
and the sound of music." But in Goshen Jacob also 
found employment for his energies of mind and body. He 
superintended the settlement of the land, and took in 
hand the delicate task of maintaining amicable relations 
with the Egyptian power on the one border and with the 
barbarians of the desert on the other. Above all, Jacob 
had the opportunity of impressing his own personality 
upon the lives and destinies of his descendants. Rarely 
has any man, in any age, had such an opportunity to 
mould the future of a nation, and never, surely, has it 
been so nobly and so successfully improved. In that 
even-tide of peace and prosperity he was graciously 
spared to accomplish a great work for his people, to 
know that 

" Something ere the end, 
Some work of noble note may yet be done ; " 

but over and beyond all, these last years must have given 
the seal of completion to that " work of noble note " 
which the God of the birthright had wrought in Jacob's 
soul. The sorrows of the past, some of which his own 



The Land of Goshen. 197 

sins or the sins of others had brought upon him, would 
work their perfect work of refinement and purification. 
As he thought of these sorrows in seasons of meditation 
he must have marvelled at the grace which had supported 
him through them all. The Jewish rabbis speak of the 
" seven" afflictions of Jacob: the persecution of Esau, 
the injustice of Laban, the lameness received from the 
angel at Peniel, the dishonor of his daughter Dinah, the 
loss of Joseph, the imprisonment of Simeon, and the de- 
parture of Benjamin for Egypt. But his sorrows were 
more than seven. To the list given we might add the 
loss of his property in famine-time, the moral and mental 
failure of Reuben his first-born, and the chiefest of all his 
sorrows, the death of his youthful wife Rachel. But in 
the evening of his days in the land of Goshen Jacob 
could say, It is good for me that I have been in trouble ; 
having sowed many harvests in tears, I now reap in joy." 
3. When " the time drew near that Israel must die " 
he gave repeated expression to his resignation and thank- 
ful appreciation of the goodness of God under all the dis- 
pensations of His providence. He ordered that his body 
should be buried in the Holy Land. Then he called for 
Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, laid his hands 
upon their heads and blessed them in the beautiful words 
which to-day we may consider in one aspect only, namely, 
as an expression of his own thought of the Lord his God : 
" God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did 
walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this 
day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless 
the lads." In these words Jacob bore his testimony to 
the faithfulness of the Lord. All the vicissitudes as well 
as all the joys of a long, eventful life are counted by him 
to be proofs of the goodness and love of God. The 



198 The Bartered Birthright. 

promises made him at Bethel have been kept. His God 
is the promise-keeping God. He acknowledges that the 
guiding hand of his Heavenly Father has led him through 
all dangers, fed him all his life long, and that the angel 
of the Covenant has redeemed him from all his sins. 

If now while it is called to-day we also live in the same 
loving faith that all our temporal needs shall be provided 
for and that we shall be redeemed from all our sins, then 
our last end may be like Jacob's; and in that hour which 
must surely come to each, we know not how soon, we 
may have the same blessed assurance and be able to say, 
" I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness." "Tome to live is Christ, to die is gain." 



THE TWO SONS OF JOSEPH. 

SATURDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God 
which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me 
from all evil, bless the lads." — Gen. xlviii. 15, 16. 

THE mountain streamlet flows on unceasingly towards 
the great deep. We see here the working of a law 
of nature. The streamlet cannot but obey the law. 
Yet we almost feel as we watch it go leaping and bound- 
ing along that it loves is course and knows its true home. 
The largeness and freedom that are before it seem to lend 
to it their charm, and you would not persuade it if you 
could that it will be lost in the vastness to which it is 
hastening. The ocean claims it for its own, and the 
streamlet seems to love to be thus claimed. It should 
be the same in human life. The love and the knowledge 
of God are for the lives of His children and it is a law of 
our nature that we should go to Him. 

For years Jacob's life has been turning in the direction 
of the Divine and now the end is near. When God 
wrestled with him at Peniel it was significant that the 
great struggle in which he gained the name of Israel, the 
Prince of God, took place upon the banks of a mountain 
streamlet called Jabbok, for Jabbok means " the wrestler." 
This stream was probably so named because it wrestled 
and struggled and turned upon its course in forcing its 
passage through the rocky hills which stood in its path- 
way. Thus in its name as well as in itself the stream 

199 



200 The Bartered Birthright. 

was an emblem of Jacob's life. For the stream and the 
life flowed on to the deeps. Sometimes, too, the most 
tumultuous waters will find a last level ere they reach the 
sea and flow on calmly to mingle with its strength 
and peace. So the wrestling brook of Jacob's life found 
at last a quiet haven in which to rest ere it flowed out to 
its final home in the mighty deep. 

The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
which recounts the triumphs of faith on the part of the 
heroes of the Old Covenant, selects the incident before us 
as the most striking illustration of Jacob's faith in God. 
" By faith," the chapter declares, " Jacob when he was 
a-dying blessed the two sons of Joseph, and worshipped, 
leaning upon the top of his staff." Why does the New 
Testament thus emphasize this blessing ? 

In the first place it was a formal adoption of Ephraim 
and Manasseh. " They shall be mine," as my own sons, 
said the patriarch. These two sons of Joseph were no 
longer to be Jacob's grandsons, but his own sons, and 
were to take their places as heads of the Tribes of Israel. 
Joseph was not to be represented by a tribe bearing his 
own name ; he was to be honored above his brothers by 
having two of the Twelve Tribes named Ephraim and 
Manasseh. This adoption brought the present number 
of the tribes up to thirteen, but the original and symbol- 
ical number of twelve was subsequently secured once 
more by the removal of the tribe of Levi from secular 
employments and possessions when the Levites were set 
apart to the priestly office. By faith Jacob, in this act 
of adoption, conferred upon his favorite son Joseph a 
double portion of the inheritance and invested him with 
the primogeniture which weak and sinful Reuben, the 
first-born, had forfeited. The birthright was, therefore, 



The Two Sons of Joseph. 201 

divided, its temporal advantages being assigned to 
Joseph, its spiritual privileges to Judah, to whom was 
made over the honor " of being the next connecting link 
in the chain of grace, leading on and down to the coming 
of the Saviour." Christian teachers have always spirit- 
ualized this adoption of Joseph's sons. They have seen 
in it a foreshadowing of that adoption whereby we cry, 
1 ' Abba, Father ; ' ' an adoption by which the redeemed are 
made inheritors of the Kingdom of Christ, whereof He 
Himself is the true and rightful heir. 

It is to be noticed also that as Jacob worshipped lean- 
ing upon the top of the staff with which he passed over 
the Jordan in his lonely youth, there was in his face and 
manner some such overwhelming manifestation of faith 
that Joseph yielded to it and made that faith his own. 
His sons through their Egyptian mother, Asenath, took 
rank with the nobility of the land. This connection to- 
gether with their father's great political power would 
have opened the highest position in the realm to Ephraim 
and Manasseh. But Joseph, a clear-headed man of the 
world, was ready to sacrifice these prospects in order to 
secure for his sons an inheritance of which Jacob's faith 
in the promises of God was the sole guaranty and title 
deed. His father's faith that in the land of Canaan his 
descendants should become a rich and powerful nation 
conquered every doubt in Joseph's mind, and without 
hesitation he consented that his sons should be numbered 
among believers and give themselves up to the service of 
the God of Israel. He brought the lads forward and 
caused them to kneel, the elder at Jacob's right hand, 
the younger at his left. But Jacob crossed his hands, 
placing his right hand upon Ephraim's head and his left 
hand upon Manasseh's head. This " displeased Joseph," 



202 The Bartered Birthright. 

who said, " Not so, my father: for this is the first-born; 
put thy right hand upon this head." Jacob, however, 
had made no mistake. He had read correctly the char- 
acters of the lads ; furthermore, he was Divinely guided. 
He was free from the weakness and wilfulness which his 
own father, Isaac, had displayed under similar circum- 
stances. l< I know it, my son, I know it," he replied to 
Joseph, " he also shall become a people, and he also 
shall be great : but truly his younger brother shall be 
greater than he." While they knelt thus before him, 
with his arms forming the sign of the cross, the patriarch 
bestowed upon the young men the blessing of the text : 
" God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did 
walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this 
day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless 
the lads." 

In the next chapter Jacob seems to use a three-fold 
name for God, and this benediction certainly takes a 
triple form. 

When Jacob said, " God, before whom my fathers 
Abraham and Isaac did walk," he called upon the name 
of the one true eternal God. The young men must for- 
get the idols of Egypt. The God of Israel, the God of 
all gods, should be their God. " And," added the patri- 
arch, " let my name be named upon them "; henceforth 
forever the God of the Covenant shall be known as the 
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob ; Jacob added his own name to the name of the 
God of his fathers. 

" The God which fed me all my life long unto this 
day." The word translated " fed " means more than 
provided with earthly food and drink. It is a word which 
signifies performing the duties of a shepherd. The God 



The Two Sons of Joseph. 203 

which " shepherded " me all my life long. David sings, 
1 The Lord is my shepherd," but Jacob first conceived 
and gave utterance to that " metaphor which has sur- 
vived temple, and sacrifice, and priesthood, and will sur- 
vive even earth itself; for ' I am the Good Shepherd ' is 
true to-day as when first spoken by Jesus, and the ' Lamb 
which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them,' and 
be their Shepherd, when the flock is carried to the upper 
pastures, and the springs that never fail." Jacob had 
been a shepherd all his life long. In his speech to Laban 
he gave a vivid description of the cares and dangers of 
such a calling. But he loved the shepherd's life, and 
one day as he watched the flock he said to himself, " All 
that I do for the sheep God does for me in an infinitely 
greater measure. He supplies all my wants, guides, 
guards, loves me. I am the shepherd of these sheep; 
the Lord is my shepherd." And it was Jacob upon whom 
first flashed this thought which has cheered and refreshed 
the heart of the world. 

' The Angel which redeemed me from all evil." The 
word for " redeemed " is the same word which is used by 
Job and quoted in the Burial Office, " I know that my 
Redeemer liveth." Much has been written of this old 
Hebrew word; we cannot err, however, in saying that 
the Goel to whom " both Jacob and Job looked forward, 
and of whom both Moses and the prophets did testify, 
was Christ." We know assuredly that He is our 
Redeemer. 

In this Holy Week before us our thoughts will be 
directed to the redemption purchased for us on Calvary. 
In that great fact of our religion the Good Shepherd be- 
came the Lamb of the Passover; Himself the Priest, 
Himself the Victim. Putting aside all theories and all 



204 The Bartered Birthright. 

controversies concerning the atonement the Christian 
heart may confidently rest upon the short, simple, yet 
sufficient declaration of St. Paul, " Christ died for our 
sins according to the Scriptures." 



UNSTABLE AS WATER. 

MONDAY BEFORE EASTER. 
" Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." — Gen. xlix. 4. 

THE forty-ninth chapter of Genesis has ever been con- 
sidered one of the great chapters of the Bible. 
When Jacob assembled his twelve sons about his death- 
bed he uttered a prophecy which he declared should 
cover the centuries unto the " last days." The remain- 
ing books of the Old Testament are occupied with the 
fulfilment of the destinies here predicted, while the 
heavenly city which St. John beheld in his vision " had 
twelve gates, and the names written thereon " were " the 
names of the Twelve Tribes of the Children of Israel." 
That Jacob's prediction in this remarkable chapter should 
furnish most helpful and suitable themes for Holy Week 
meditations will surprise none who have read the chapter 
attentively. 

The words of the text, " Unstable as water, thou shalt 
not excel," were addressed to Reuben, the first-born. 
His mental and moral failure cut him off from the bless- 
ings of the birthright. There is here primarily a reference 
to Reuben's unrestrained passions, which are represented 
as boiling and bubbling like water in a caldron or a gush- 
ing spring; but " unstable," unsteady, inconstant " as 
water " is an accurate description of the man's character 
as a whole. Indecision and vacillation marked each im- 
portant act in his history. When the brothers conspired 
to kill Joseph, Reuben's instability appeared. He was 

205 



206 The Bartered Birthright. 

in command and he made a stand against the murder. 
He seemed to be the only one of the company who dis- 
played natural affection or horror of bloodshed. There 
was a tender spot in his heart for the little Dreamer. 
He was the brother, too, who had greatest reason for 
hating the lad, for the favorite seemed destined to sup- 
plant him in the chieftainship of the tribe. And so there 
was much goodness and self-sacrifice in the heart of the 
man who desired to save little Joseph. " No," said he, 
" we will not kill him, we will cast him into a pit and let 
him die. " But he intended to rescue the lad. At the first 
opportunity he would remove him secretly from the pit 
and " deliver him to his father again." Reuben here re- 
vealed his weakness. He wished to act generously and 
do what was right, but he lacked the courage and the en- 
ergy to carry out his purpose. Even the plan of rescue, 
devised in a feebleness which could not face the determi- 
nation of the ten brothers, failed because of its author's 
instability, for, thinking that there was now no immedi- 
ate danger, he went away to attend to other matters, and 
while he was absent the ten sold Joseph to the merchant- 
men of Midian. Reuben, nevertheless, might have saved 
his brother. He was in command. Had he manfully 
and resolutely asserted his authority the ten would not 
have dared to disobey him. But Reuben had not suf- 
ficient strength of character for the emergency and 
showed himself " unstable as water." 

The Gospels for Holy Week bring before us a Reuben 
of the New Testament. In the Passion of our blessed 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Roman governor who 
pronounced the sentence of death was as " unstable as 
water." Pontius Pilate wavered, hesitated, and failed. 
In his struggle to save the innocent Christ, the true 



Unstable as Water. 207 

Joseph, he was that " double-minded man " of whom 
St. James speaks, " unstable in all his ways ; for he 
that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the 
wind and tossed. " Water is the very image of vacillation 
and indecision of purpose. Whether we observe it in the 
waves of the sea driven by the wind and tossed ; in the quiet 
lake reflecting the last object impressed upon it, moon, 
stars, foliage, or face of man; taking readily the mould 
and form of the vessel into which it is poured ; — it is ever 
fickle, incapable of standing alone, powerless to resist the 
pressure of external forces. When a man is " as weak 
as water " he is a pitiable creature. Alexander the 
Great, when asked how he had conquered the world, re- 
plied , ' ' By not wavering. ' ' Philip van Artevelde's words 
express the universal sentiment : 

* 4 All my life long 
I have beheld with most respect the man 
Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him, 
And from among them chose considerately, 
And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind 
Pursued his purpose. " 

Pilate's purpose was to escape the guilt and dishonor 
of pronouncing the death sentence upon an innocent 
man. St. Peter, in the book of the Acts, tells us that 
Pilate " was determined to let Him go." But he did 
not pursue that purpose with a steadfast mind. The 
story of the changeable moods in which he resolved, hesi- 
tated, vacillated, resolved anew, and finally yielded, is a 
tragedy in itself. 

Pilate, like Reuben, however, was a man who claims 
our admiration and our pity as well as our condemnation. 
He had led the rough and careless life of a soldier, a life 



208 The Bartered Birthright. 

of self-indulgence. But there is enough on record to 
show that he was a man of some education and refine- 
ment; naturally just, generous, attractive; a gentleman, 
according to the code or standard of his race and rank. 
He was the sixth governor-general sent to Jerusalem 
since the Roman conquest, and from the beginning his 
administration had been unpopular and unsuccessful. 
At the ceremonies connected with his assumption of 
office there was a riot, and up to the present time three 
formal indictments had already been lodged against him 
in Rome. He knew that another serious uprising of the 
people would probably cost him his office. 

After our Lord's condemnation in the palace of the 
high priest He was dragged through the streets to Pilate's 
judgment hall. The leaders of the mob demanded an 
order for the execution of the Prisoner. They expected 
no difficulty or delay, for they knew that Pilate was afraid 
of them. The governor took in the situation at a glance. 
He perceived that it was for envy they had delivered 
Jesus and he recognized the fact that the Prisoner was 
no common criminal. Now the Roman law called for 
justice — stern, unpitying justice, it is true — still it called 
for justice. The governor was under oath to administer 
justice, and it was a famous saying among the judges and 
administrators of that old Roman Empire, " Let justice 
be done though the heavens fall." Pilate's honor was at 
stake. All his manhood was aroused as he faced the 
mob and demanded, " What accusation bring ye against 
this man ? " thus boldly declaring that he refused their 
unlawful demand and intended to give the Prisoner a fair 
and impartial hearing. And so the trial began ; a trial 
which was in reality nothing more than a trial of Pilate's 
stability of purpose and of character. 



Unstable as Water. 209 

The governor certainly made most strenuous efforts to 
save the Lord Jesus Christ from the cross ; six times at 
least in the course of the trial he endeavored to set the 
Prisoner free ; three times he pronounced officially, " I 
find no fault in this man." But the chief priests held to 
their purpose. Since the conquest their council could 
not inflict the death penalty and the crowd, already be- 
coming turbulent, fiercely demanded, " Let Him be 
crucified." Then the frightened, wavering judge asked 
a second private interview with Christ. The Prisoner 
might confess. At any rate it would give the judge a 
moment's respite. But somehow the Lord's presence 
and words awakened in Pilate thoughts of the unseen, 
and he was the more afraid. At this crisis, when con- 
science and all that was best in him pleaded for Christ, 
his wife's message reached him. Claudia Procula was 
his best friend, a sensible, gracious woman, and he loved 
her. Dreams, too, were regarded by the Romans with 
the utmost veneration. Had his wife's dream no " di- 
vinely sinister " significance ? As he once more faced 
the mob, what must have been the thoughts of Pilate's 
heart ? Should he yield ? Should he dishonor his office 
and his manhood ? ' ' No ! " he seemed to have said to him- 
self, " I will stand firm ! I will heed the voices of wife, of 
conscience, and of the gods ! " But at that fateful mo- 
ment the leaders of the mob made their final move, and 
won. They raised the cry, " If thou let this man go 
thou art not Caesar's friend!" At the mention of that 
" dark and terrible " name, at the thought of the " ulcer- 
ous features" of Tiberius, his " poisonous suspicions," 
his " desperate revenge," Pilate's resolution tottered and 
fell. He called for water, unstable as himself, washed 
his hands of blood, and gave the sentence. 



210 The Bartered Birthright. 

We know that Pilate's weakness in this trial was the 
chief cause of his subsequent downfall. Instability of 
purpose is fatal to temporal success of any kind. For 
Christians, however, the words of the text have a special 
significance. When we were confirmed, when we made 
our first communion, did we not resolve to be steadfast ? 
We thought we should never waver. " Bypath meadow " 
had no attractions; our course should be " as the shining 
light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 
But must we not confess that we have been " unstable 
as water," unstable in prayer, in faith, in loyalty to the 
Church ; hot, and cold, and lukewarm, each in turn, in our 
devotion to Jesus Christ! To-day let us say, " O Cruci- 
fied Lord, I would renew my steadfastness, I would love 
and serve Thee to the end." 



THE SCEPTRE OF JUDAH. 

TUESDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

" The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between 
his feet, until Shiloh come." — Gen. xlix. io. 

IN the blessing of Judah Jacob reaches the climax of 
his prophetic predictions. The primacy of Israel is 
here bestowed upon faithful Leah's fourth son. In the 
significant words of the text there is certainly the " an- 
nouncement of a Personality, mysterious, ineffable, sub- 
lime, which dwarfs all others — as Mont Blanc the lesser 
elevations of his mountain realm." Before that Person- 
ality, seen by faith, the dying patriarch " bows in wor- 
ship," while his withered face is illumined " with a light 
not born of earth." 

In this prophecy, which is generally accepted as Mes- 
sianic, Jacob foretells the future fortunes of Judah and 
of the tribe which Judah founded, and in his words we 
may also read of Christ of whom they give us a true and 
pleasing picture. The prophecy, as will be noticed, 
takes a poetical form : 

" Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise : 
Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies ; 
Thy father's children shall bow down before thee. 
Judah is a lion's whelp : 
From the prey, my son, thou art gone up : 
He stooped down, he couched as a lion, 
And as an old lion ; who shall rouse him up ? 
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 

2ii 



212 The Bartered Birthright. 

Until Shiloh come ; 

And unto him shall the gathering of the people be, 

Binding his foal unto the vine, 

And his ass's colt unto the choice vine ; 

He washed his garments in wine 

And his clothes in the blood of grapes : 

His eyes shall be red with wine, 

And his teeth white with milk." 

You will observe that this prophecy has three divisions, 
each of which takes up and repeats the " happy name of 
Judah." 

I. In the first division we are told how Judah shall be 
regarded by his brethren, and how he shall deal with the 
foes of Israel. " Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren 
shall praise: thy father's children shall bow down before 
thee." Jerusalem, the capital city of the Holy Land, 
was located within Judah's borders, and David and Solo- 
mon were sons of his tribe. The word Jezv was also de- 
rived from his name. The name Judah means " praise," 
or " praise to God," and so there is a play upon the 
word, " Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall 
praise." It has been pointed out that the angel's song 
for Judah's son, Jesus, " Glory to God in the highest, on 
earth peace," in the Hebrew might have been, " Judah 
in the highest, on earth Shiloh." And Jacob's words 
may be applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. ' Thou art He 
whom Thy brethren shall praise." Judah's son David 
said of Christ, " Prayer shall be made ever unto Flim, 
and daily shall He be praised;" and we sing, " Praise 
Him all creatures here below." " Thy father's children 
shall bow down before Thee " are also words which we 
may ascribe to Him of whom it is written: " All kings 
shall fall down before Him, all nations shall do Him 
service; " and " at His name every knee shall bow." 



The Sceptre of Judah. 213 

Of Judah's enemies it is predicted that his " hand" 
shall be in their " neck." The tribe of Judah should 
fear no foe and triumph over the enemies of Israel. But 
we remember that " Jesus stretched forth His hand " 
against sin, death, and hell. " The Lord said unto my 
Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand until I make Thine 
enemies Thy footstool," for " He must reign till He hath 
put all enemies under His feet." 

2. In the second part of the prophecy Judah is set forth 
as the lion of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. In future 
years the lion became the battle standard of the royal 
tribe of Judah. In the Revelation St. John identifies 
Christ as the One of whom Jacob here prophesied and 
calls Him " the lion of the tribe of Judah." In the 
words, " From the prey, my son, thou art gone up," 
Jacob may be interpreted as addressing the suffering and 
conquering Christ: " Thou, my Son, art gone up on 
high; Thou has led captivity captive; Thou hast bound 
the strong man, Satan, and hast spoiled his goods; Thou 
hast come forth as a conqueror from the grave, and death 
is swallowed up in victory." The phrase, " He stooped 
down," is especially descriptive of our Lord's humiliation 
in His Passion and the depths of suffering into which He 
descended on the Cross, where, as St. Paul says, " Being 
found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and 
became obedient unto death, even the death of the 
Cross; " but from that " stooping," from that " couch- 
ing down, ' ' the Lord has ■ ' gone up ; ' ' ' Wherefore God 
also hath highly exalted " the crucified and risen Christ, 
" and given Him a name which is above every name." 

3. The third portion of Jacob's prediction concerning 
Judah begins with the words, " The sceptre shall not de- 
part from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 



214 The Bartered Birthright. 

until Shiloh come." This passage is not without its 
difficulties, critical and exegetical. In Holy Week we 
will take what is certain. 

Shiloh is a " mystic " word, a word " coined by 
Jacob," and it has a " hundred meanings." Primarily 
it means the Rest-Giver, the Prince of Peace ; so for us it 
is one of the precious names of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. " Until Shiloh come the sceptre shall not 
depart from Judah." A cautious and learned modern 
commentator, Canon Rawlinson, does not hesitate to say 
that this " prophecy may be considered as fulfilled by 
the continuance of Judea as an independent kindgom 
until Rome established her dominion over it by the ap- 
pointment, in A.D. 8, of Coponius, the first procurator." 
In the year of our Lord 8, Shiloh had already come, the Babe 
of Bethlehem. But it is not necessary to claim a literal 
fulfilment for this, or for the later prophecy that David's 
seed should sit on the throne for ever and ever. The 
heart of the prophecy is a precious certainty. In any 
case the Jewish nation lasted, the Jewish Church lasted, 
until the coming of Christ. This is a fact of history. 
To-day, in the truest sense of the words, David has an 
heir who will sit on the throne forever, " and of the in- 
crease of His government and peace there shall be no 
end." ' Unto Him," continues the prediction of Jacob, 
'- shall the gathering of the people be." Our Lord 
shall be the " Desire of all nations," He shall " gather 
together in one the children of God," for He Himself has 
promised to gather all His sheep together so that " there 
shall be one fold and one Shepherd." 

The concluding clauses describe the fruitfulness of the 
region which should be assigned to Judah in the land of 
Canaan. The vines should be so strong that asses could 



The Sceptre of judah. 215 

be tied to them, and grapes so abundant that wine should 
be as plentiful as water. But the words, " Binding his 
foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice 
vine," have reminded holy men that " foal " and " ass's 
colt " are are figures of the Gentiles as " the vine " is a 
figure of the Jewish Church. The Psalmist said of the 
Church of the Old Covenant, " Thou hast brought a vine 
out of Egypt," and again, " Thou God of hosts, look 
down from heaven, behold, and visit this vine." In the 
New Testament our Lord represents His union with His 
Church as the union of a vine and its branches. And so 
on Palm Sunday in the remarkable fulfilment of Zech- 
ariah's prophecy, " Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, 
meek, riding upon an ass, even upon a colt, the foal of 
an ass," a further fulfilment of Jacob's words has been 
seen, for Christ advanced to His passion in order to " tie 
the foal unto the choice vine," binding the Gentiles to 
the privileges of Israel. As St. Augustine (quoted by 
Bishop Wordsworth) says: ' ' He bound His foal unto 
the vine ' when He rode on the colt to Jerusalem, and 
prefigured the bringing in of the Gentiles to the Church 
of God. He ' washed His garments in wine;' in the 
wine of that Blood which was shed for the remission of 
sins. He is the bunch of grapes which was suspended on 
the wood. He washed His robes, and the robes of His 
Church ' in the blood of grapes.' ' His eyes are red with 
wine,' for His saints are filled with holy joy. ' His teeth 
also are white with milk,' for babes in Christ are " nour- 
ished by Him. 

Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be. ' ' Let 
these old words concerning the promised Shiloh sink 
into our hearts this day. He Himself said, " I, if I be 
lifted up will draw all men unto Me. " Once He was lifted 



216 The Bartered Birthright. 

up on Calvary's Cross. During Holy Week throughout 
the world that Cross is again lifted up. Unto Him is 
the gathering of the people. No man in Holy Week can 
entirely escape the remembrance of the Passion and 
Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This holy season preaches 
Christ crucified to multitudes who never enter the doors 
of the church. Now, however, He is especially lifted 
up before the eyes of the believer. Thou, O Lifted-up 
Redeemer, hast said Thou wilt draw all men; O draw 
me ! The power of Thy Cross has changed the world ; 
O may it change me ! O Saviour of the world, who by 
Thy Cross and precious Blood hath redeemed us; save 
us, and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord. 



GRIEVED BY THE ARCHERS. 

WEDNESDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

" The archers have sorely grieved him. and shot at him, and hated him : 
But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong 
by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob ; (from thence is the shepherd, the 
stone of Israel :) " — Gen. xlix. 23, 24. 

THE text is a portion of Jacob's prophetic blessing 
upon his favorite son, Joseph. The dying patri- 
arch has a blessing for each of his twelve sons, but when 
he reaches Rachel's first-born, his heart overflows in 
words of pride and praise. In glowing and exuberant 
language he tells of Joseph's triumphs over all his foes in 
the past and foretells for him the richest future happiness 
and prosperity; yet the greater part of this blessing is 
history rather than prophecy. In the words of the text 
the patriarch certainly speaks of the sufferings his son 
has endured and of the Divine strength imparted to him, 
by which he was enabled to triumph over those who 
hated him. Whatever is prophetical must be said of 
another ; and it is impossible to read the words without 
thinking of Another, even the Lord Jesus Christ. The 
theologians of all schools agree in making the life and 
character of Joseph a foreshadowing of Him who was to 
come. The greatest of the Christian poets have also 
seen in Joseph a picture of Christ. Newman opens his 
beautiful sonnet on Joseph with these words: " O purest 
semblance of the Eternal Son." Isaac Williams says: 

" Thus, sweet-souled Joseph, as thy life ran on, 

Each scene disclosed anew th' Eternal Son." 

217 



2i 8 The Bartered Birthright. 

To-day let us consider the sufferings described in the 
text. Are not the words as true of Jesus as of Joseph ? 
" The archers have sorely grieved Him, and shot at Him, 
and hated Him." Recall some of the chief points of the 
resemblance. Joseph was the son loved of the father; 
so was Christ. The dreams of Joseph which foretold the 
bowing down of his brethren before him remind us of 
One greater than Joseph, at whose name " every knee 
shall bow." Joseph was " sorely grieved by the archers," 
he was " a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; " 
he was hated by his brethren and stripped of his raiment, 
even as Jesus Christ was, and cast into a pit as a dead 
man ; he was one, as the Evangelical Prophet said of 
Christ, whose garments " were dyed in blood." His 
brethren, " moved with envy," sold him to the Egyptians 
for the price of a slave; and the Jews, " moved with 
envy," delivered Christ who was also sold for a price. 
Joseph was sorely grieved by the archers of temptation 
in Potiphar s house, but he did no wrong ; Christ, too, was 
tempted in the wilderness, yet was " without sin." 
Joseph was falsely accused and imprisoned, while the 
True Joseph was " accused by false witnesses," and 
" numbered with the transgressors." In the dungeon 
Joseph was " as a dead man out of mind," and was num- 
bered with " two malefactors," the butler and the baker, 
to one of whom he promised life, and to the other, death. 
On the Cross our Lord was hanged between two thieves, 
one saved, the other lost; and in the dungeon of the 
grave He was " free among the dead." But each was 
raised from the pit to rule in royalty. Truly of Joseph 
it may be said, 

4 4 Type thou art of One more holy, 
Who His glory laid aside, 



Grieved by the Archers. 219 

Took the form of servant lowly, 
Stooped to suffering man and died. 

" He was scorned and sold and hated 
By the men He came to save, 
With a cruel wrath unsated 
Followed to His three-days' grave. " 

Joseph's history after he rose from the grave of Poti- 
phar's dungeon is as prophetic as the story of his suffer- 
ings. He " is raised on high among the heathen," as 
Isaac Williams has said, " saving life and giving bread, 
the bread that saveth from death; setting forth Him 
who giveth the true bread from Heaven; married to a 
daughter of Egypt, as Christ's Bride, the Church, is 
taken from among the Gentiles ; then receiving his 
brethren as ' one alive from the dead,' with words like 
those of our Lord Himself after His Resurrection, when 
they were ' troubled at His presence,' and ' supposed 
that they had seen a spirit,' but Joseph says, ' Come 
near me, I pray you. And they came near. And he 
said, I am Joseph your brother.' " 

The words of the text, " The archers have sorely 
grieved him," are fulfilled in the sufferings of Christ as 
they are brought before us in to-day's Gospel. All the 
archers of evil have shot at Him, and hated Him. The 
story of His agonies of mind and body occupies a large 
part of the four Gospel narratives. Above all He was 
grieved with the wounds of an arrow whose sharpness we 
know not nor can imagine, when the Lord God " laid on 
Him the iniquity of us all." 

" But his bow abode in strength; " the Lord Jesus en- 
dured the sorrows of the Cross because " the arms of His 
hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God 



220 The Bartered Birthright 

of Jacob." Here was one name for God, but the patri- 
arch added two other names and gave his God a triple 
name, — " The mighty God of Jacob, the Shepherd, the 
Stone of Israel." These names were each taken up by 
future writers of Holy Scripture, explained and ex- 
pounded ; and they have made for themselves a perma- 
nent place in religious literature. 

The Mighty God of Jacob. — In this personal appropria- 
tion of God, Jacob could cry," My Lord, and my God," 
as Christ could say, " O my Father"; even as each 
Christian heart can speak of One who " loved me and 
gave Himself for me." This name for God was never 
forgotten by Jacob's descendants. How often do we 
read in the Psalms of the " God of Jacob"! " The 
Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our re- 
fuge." Our Lord Himself used this name as a proof of a 
future life when He said, "As touching the resurrection 
of the dead, have ye never read " that long after the 
burial of the three great patriarchs God revealed Himself 
to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and 
" God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." 
And we know that in His Passion our blessed Saviour 
was strengthened by the hands of the mighty God of 
Jacob. 

The Shepherd. — Once before Jacob had spoken of the 
" God which shepherded me all my life; " he thought of 
the Lord as his shepherd long before David wrote the 
twenty-third Psalm. The figure may be found in many 
later books of the Bible. " Behold the Lord God shall 
come with a strong hand; He will feed His flock like a 
shepherd," declares the prophet; and to-day we see the 
Good Shepherd of souls ready " to lay down His life for 
the sheep." 



Grieved by the Archers. 221 

The Stone of Israel. — Jacob here coined another pre- 
cious word which will never die. "Trust ye in the Lord 
forever," said Isaiah, " for in the Lord Jehovah is ever- 
lasting strength," or as the Hebrew is rendered literally 
in the margin of our Bible, " in the Lord Jehovah is the 
Rock of Ages; " and our Lord said, " Did ye never read 
in the Scripture, The stone which the builders rejected, 
the same is become the head-stone of the corner ? " And 
of the cleft rock in the wilderness the Epistle to the He- 
brews declares, " That rock was Christ." In a great 
sermon upon this text Dr. Maclaren says: " At one end 
of the long chain this dim figure of the dying Jacob, amid 
the strange vanished life of Egypt, stretches out his 
withered hands to God the stone of Israel; at the other 
end, we lift up ours to Jesus, and cry: 

" ' Rock of Ages ! cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in Thee.' " 

To-day the Church brings before us the complete ful- 
filment of the prediction of Genesis. On the Cross we 
do see Him whom ** the archers have sorely grieved," 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and we see Him " made strong " 
to submit to the agonies of the Crucifixion " by the hands 
of the mighty God of Jacob, the Shepherd, the Stone of 
Israel." 

He was the true Joseph who in Jacob's words " was 
separate from his brethren." That separated One is our 
Brother, and He is grieved for our sakes, in order that 
He may bear our griefs. As we think of that Cross each 
pardoned Christian soul, remembering how once it was 
stricken by the archers of sin and healed by Him who 
had Himself been hurt by the archers, can reverently re- 
peat the singularly beautiful words of Cowper: 



222 The Bartered Birthright. 



I was a stricken deer, that left the herd 

Long since ; with many an arrow deep infixed 

My panting side was charged, when I withdrew, 

To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 

There was I found by One, who had Himself 

Been hurt by th' archers. In His side He bore, 

And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars ; 

With gentle force soliciting the darts, 

He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live." 

The Task, Book III. 



THY SALVATION. 

THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 
" I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." — Gen. xlix. 18. 

IN the midst of his prophetic blessings upon the Twelve 
Tribes of Israel Jacob uttered the ejaculation of the 
text. Why he paused for prayer at this particular point 
in his speech we do not know, and the exclamation of the 
text is open to various interpretations ; but there can be 
no doubt that the salvation he waited for was the last and 
chiefest blessing of the Lord. As the patriarch lay dying 
the prophetic ecstasy was upon him. Already he has 
seen a vision of the Shiloh unto whom should be the 
future gatherings of the people. He was a man of prayer, 
the Prince of God, the Prevailer, and so we must recog- 
nize in his dying prayer the highest aspiration of a spirit- 
ual master and victor. 

For many years Jacob had set his affections on things 
above and his present utterance was a fulfilment of the 
promise that " the righteous hath hope in his death." 
He now waited for salvation, he looked forward to a 

better country," a clearer, fuller revelation, " a city 
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is 
God." ' I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord,' " he 
says; " I have experienced a large measure of the blessed- 
ness of that salvation, for the God of my fathers has 
shepherded me all my life long unto this day, and the 
Angel of the Covenant hath redeemed my soul from all 
evil ; yet there is much that is dim and vague. Behold, 

223 



224 The Bartered Birthright. 

I die ; my spirit will soon return to God who gave it ; 
and there, in the waiting-place of the departed, I shall 
know and see, and Thy full salvation shall be revealed to 
me in the face of Him who is thy Salvation and my 
Saviour." 

Now in the first chapter of his first Epistle St. Peter 
alludes to the ejaculation of the text, and we may well 
turn to his comment upon the salvation of the Lord as 
the Christian interpretation of Jacob's words. The 
Apostle speaks of salvation as a complete and eternal 
deliverance from all sin and from all imperfection: " Of 
which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched 
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come 
unto you : searching what, or what manner of time the 
spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it 
testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory 
that should follow." St. Peter would include Jacob 
among the prophets who inquired and searched diligently 
— who thought, meditated, prayed, and earnestly en- 
deavored to comprehend the meaning of the revelation 
given unto them to utter concerning the salvation of the 
Lord. The prophets of old time, moreover, foretold 
that this salvation should be accomplished and secured 
by " the sufferings of Christ." The true Joseph must 
be " sorely grieved by the archers." The Holy Spirit 
which was in the prophets testified beforehand to a sal- 
vation won by a suffering Messiah. A suffering Saviour, 
declares St. Peter, is the main theme of Old Testament 
prophecy. In his sermon in Solomon's porch the same 
Apostle repeats this assertion : ' ' Those things which 
God before had shewed by the mouth of all His prophets, 
that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled." And 
St. Paul, in his speech before King Agrippa, declared 



Thy Salvation. 225 

that he had said " none other things than those which 
the prophets and Moses did say should come : that Christ 
should suffer, and that He should be the first that should 
rise from the dead/' Our Lord Himself on the day of 
His Resurrection expounded to the two disciples on the 
way to Emmaus the things concerning Himself, " begin- 
ning at Moses and all the prophets," saying, " ought not 
Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into 
His glory ? " 

In his reference to the salvation for which Jacob 
longed, St. Peter teaches not only that the salvation of 
the Lord was purchased in the past on Calvary, but also 
that by His Passion and Crucifixion our Lord won for 
us a present and a future salvation. Concerning salva- 
tion in the world to come, he says that the faithful are 
begotten again " to an inheritance incorruptible, and un- 
defined, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for 
you, who are kept by the power of God through faith 
unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." 
Our Lord has gone to prepare a place for us. The 
blessedness of eternal life is ours. That final and com- 
pleted salvation is ready to be revealed to each believer. 

But this salvation, past and future, is also, the Apostle 
declares, a present salvation: " Whom having not seen, 
ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet be- 
lieving, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: 
receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of 
your souls." The tenses are present. The souls of be- 
lievers are saved now. As St. Paul says, " By grace ye 
are saved through faith." And this salvation, past, 
present, and future, was wrought for us by the sufferings 
of Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Of that salva- 
tion Jacob's exclamation in the text is a prophecy, " I 
15 



226 The Bartered Birthright. 

have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord." In the fervent 
words of the devout William Law: " Salvation! It is 
the work for which Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and 
lived on earth, and died on Calvary, and descended into 
the grave, and burst the bonds of death, and mounted to 
heaven, and sits on the right hand of God. For this He 
reigns and prays on high. It is the work for which the 
Spirit seeks our earth, and knocks at the barred entrance 
of the sinner's heart. For this He assails the fortress of 
self-love, and reveals the perils of sin, and wrestles with 
ignorance and vain excuses. Salvation ! It is the first 
message which mercy uttered to a ruined world. It is 
the end of every prophecy, the purpose of every pre- 
cept, the beauty of every promise, the truth of every 
sacrifice, the substance of every rite, the song of every 
inspired lip, the longing desire of every renewed heart, 
the beacon which guides through the voyage of life, the 
haven to which the tides of grace convey, the end of 
faith, the full light of hope, the home of love ! " 

Furthermore, as a prophet Jacob would personify the 
Salvation of the Lord. His exclamation in the text re- 
minds us of the words of another aged saint of God. 
Simeon, who chanted his nunc dimittis in the temple, had 
also waited for the salvation of the Lord ; he had 
" waited for the consolation of Israel." But unlike dy- 
ing Israel he was to see the reality and not the vision 
only, for " it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost 
that he should not see death before he had seen the 
Lord's Christ." Accordingly when he clasped the Holy 
Child in his arms he cried, " Lord, now lettest Thou Thy 
servant depart in peace, according to Thy word ; for mine 
eyes have seen Thy salvation." Having waited in faith 
he could now say of the Infant in his arms, " This is Thy 



Thy Salvation. 227 

Salvation ! " But Simeon as a prophet saw yet more ; with 
" all the prophets " he foretold the sharp sword of suffer- 
ing which should pierce both the Saviour and the saved. 
As we meditate upon the salvation of the Lord, made 
ours by the death of Christ upon the Cross, that salvation 
which Jacob and all the prophets longed for and foretold, 
that salvation won in the past, our present possession, 
our hope of glory in the eternal future, can we fail, on 
this Maundy Thursday, to accept and make our own the 
grateful words of the Psalmist: " What reward shall I 
give unto the Lord for all the benefits that He hath done 
unto me ? I will receive the cup of salvation, and call 
upon the name of the Lord." The Psalm which con- 
tains these words was part of the Hallel sung by our 
blessed Lord and His Apostles on the night of the insti- 
tution of the Holy Communion, when He gave them the 
Cup of Salvation in His Blood. And so upon this Thurs- 
day which commemorates the celebration of the First 
Eucharist, O blessed Lord and Saviour, I will meditate 
upon Thy love in giving that Feast of Salvation unto 
Thy Church ; with Thy help I will prepare for my own 
Easter Communion, and on that holy day with all the 
faithful throughout the world, " I will receive the Cup 
of Salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord." As 
I kneel before the Easter altar to receive Thy gift, I will 
not forget that it is also written: " Unto them that look 
for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin, 
unto salvation." 

" O Love, who once in time wast slain, 

Pierced through and through with bitter woe, 

O Love, who wrestling thus didst gain 
That we eternal joy might know : 

O Love, I give myself to Thee : 

Thine ever, only Thine to be. 



228 The Bartered Birthright. 



O Love, who once shalt bid me rise 
From out this dying life of ours : 

O Love, who once above yon skies 
Shalt set me in the fadeless bowers : 

O Love, I give myself to Thee ; 

Thine ever, only Thine to be." 



HE YIELDED UP THE GHOST. 

GOOD FRIDAY. 
" And yielded up the ghost." — Gen. xlix. 33. 

WE are naturally inclined to be indifferent to that 
which is familiar. In the northern parts of 
Europe the sun does not rise for six months in the year, 
but when he does appear after his long sleep the people 
who dwell in those far away lands welcome him with ex- 
uberant delight. They climb to the summits of the 
great rocks which overlook the northern sea and sing 
psalms of thanksgiving to God for the reappearance of 
the king of day. The sunrise is a great event because 
months have passed since last it was seen. With us, 
however, the sun rises every morning in the year and the 
dawn is such a commonplace matter that we scarcely give 
it a moment's consideration. So it is with the familiar 
certainties of life. The great truths are so well known 
that we neglect and forget them. Some of the essential 
facts which men and women are prone to put aside are 
brought before us most vividly on Good Friday. 

One of the facts which the death of Christ emphasizes 
is the certainty that we too must die. And we know so 
well that we are mortal that we forget the fact. We 
even seek to forget it, and seem to live as though we 
were to live here forever. To-day, then, let us face this 
contingency and try to realize the end which awaits us 
all. In yielding up the ghost our blessed Lord sub- 
mitted to the lot of every child of Adam. Death reigns. 

229 



230 The Bartered Birthright. 

We must die. Over each one of us will be said, " Ashes 
to ashes, dust to dust." There is no escape; " all heads 
must come to the cold tomb." The grave yawns, your 
grave and mine. Yet how seldom when in the enjoy- 
ment of health do we reflect upon the grave and gate of 
death — our own death, our own grave ! It has been said 
that we never know the meaning of death until death 
comes to one we love. Of most of us the saying is true. 
In youth we heard of death, read of death, saw the hearse, 
the graveyard, the funeral procession ; but when death 
came to our own home, then, for the first time, we under- 
stood its awful significance. 

The death mentioned in the text will help us to think 
of our own dying day. If we have found the life of Jacob 
a fruitful and edifying Lenten study, surely, now at the 
close, as we behold him yielding up the ghost, we may 
say, " Let my last end be like his." He died in faith, 
in charity with all men, and he had " hope in his death." 
Beginning life with an inborn love for the things of earth 
rarely exceeded, still he set his affections on things 
above; and after a lifelong struggle to subdue the evil 
within him, won the crown of righteousness and died for- 
given and victorious. In Jacob " patience had her per- 
fect work." Gradually, under the discipline of a loving 
Heavenly Father's hand, he was changed from Jacob the 
Supplanter into Israel the Prince of God. But you say, 
" When Christ yielded up the ghost on Calvary He was 
more than man and He could say with an assurance 
which passed beyond faith, ' Father, into Thy hands I 
commend My spirit ; ' when Jacob yielded up the ghost 
he was an old man with little more to live for, and he 
was one of the greatest of the saints ; I am only human, 
and very human ; I have not attained unto Jacob's years 



He Yielded up the Ghost. 231 

or Jacob's faith, and the thought of my own death crushes 
and overmasters me." The fear of death, however, which 
is natural, cannot furnish a valid excuse for refusing to 
give it consideration. All living creatures fear death. 
As has been said: " The senseless, dumb creature, the 
sheep, the ox, will tremble as he sees death at his side. 
This shrinking, this horror of great darkness, comes even 
to the animal which has no sense of sin, no dread of 
doom. And why ? Because death and life are at eternal 
enmity. Man was made for unity, and death means 
destruction. Man was made for beauty, and death means 
corruption. Man was made for health, and death means 
fatal disease. If you know what it is to live in God — if 
you know what it is to feel that within you there are 
powers and capacities the exercise of which produces in- 
finite delight : if you know what pure, unselfish affection is, 
— if you have really entered into the charm of life — then 
you have shrunk with inveterate loathing from death." 
At the grave of Lazarus our blessed Lord groaned in 
spirit and was troubled. He trembled with human horror 
as the shadow of death approached Him in Gethsemane. 
And this thought of death frightens us all. Its inevit- 
ableness also adds to the fear which it inspires. 

" The black camel Death kneeleth once at each door 
And a mortal must mount to return nevermore." 

That grim messenger will come for me. I must go with 
him ; I must go alone. No human companions can share 
my journey. The grave with its loneliness, its silence, 
its worm, awaits my body. I must leave this world, my 
work, my pleasure, my goods, and be no more seen. 
Henry Kirke White's lines seem wrung from the very 
heart of humanity : 



232 The Bartered Birthright. 

" Yes, I must die — I feel that I must die, 
Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me 
As I contemplate the dim gulf of death, 
The shuddering void, the awful blank futurity. 

" And it is hard 
To feel the hand of death arrest my steps, 
Throw a chill blight o'er all my budding hopes, 
And hurl my soul untimely to the shades, 
Lost in the gaping gulf of blank oblivion." 

To him one of the saddest thoughts of death was that he 
should be forgotten by the bright world of which he then 
seemed a vital part, that soon he should be " lost in the 
gaping gulf of blank oblivion." But probably for most 
of us the chief alarm caused by the thought of the grave 
is the conviction that death does not end all, that we 
must each one appear before the Judge of all the earth 
to give account for the deeds done in the body. For how 
many would death be robbed of its sharpest sting should 
some Divine hand write over the entrances to all our 
burial grounds what infidelity once wrote on the portal 
to Pere la Chaise Cemetery, " Death is an everlasting 
sleep"! But in the sleep of death, perchance, we may 
dream, perchance, awake — " Ay, there 's the rub ! " Yes, 
there is something in the human breast which forces us 
to set our seal to the declaration of Holy Scripture, " It 
is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the 
judgment." On this one day in the year let us think 
seriously of these things and so prepare to meet our God. 
The earnest words of Canon Liddon will help us to realize 
what it is to die and to meet God : " Every man who be- 
lieves that God exists, that he himself has a soul which 
does not perish with the body, knows that a time must 
come when this meeting will be inevitable. In the hour 



He Yielded up the Ghost. 233 

of death, whether in mercy or in displeasure, God looks 
into the face of His creatures as never before. The veils 
of sense, which long had hidden His countenance, are 
then stripped away ; and as spirit meets with spirit with- 
out the interposition of any film of matter, so does man in 
death meet with his God. It is this which renders death 
so exceedingly solemn. Ere yet the last breath has fairly 
passed from the body, or the failing eyes have closed, the 
soul has partly at any rate, entered upon a world entirely 
new, magnificent, awful. It has seen beings, shapes, 
modes of existence, never even imagined before. But it 
has done more than that. It has met its God as a dis- 
embodied spirit can meet Him." Prepare, then, to meet 
thy God. Prepare to meet Him in death, prepare to 
meet Him in judgment. That judgment, demanded by 
the moral sense of mankind, is revealed in the Word of 
God, " For God hath appointed a day in which He will 
judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He 
hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto 
all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead." 
' The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as 
some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us- 
ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all 
should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord 
will come as a thief in the night ; in the which the heavens 
shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall 
melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that 
are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these 
things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought 
ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Look- 
ing for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, 
wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and 
the elements shall melt with fervent heat ? Nevertheless 



234 The Bartered Birthright. 

we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a 
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, 
beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent 
that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and 
blameless." 

May God grant that when each one of us shall have 
served Him in our generation we may be gathered to our 
fathers having the testimony of a good conscience ; in the 
communion of the Catholic Church; in the confidence of 
a certain faith ; in the comfort of a reasonable, religious 
and holy hope, in favor with our God, and in perfect 
charity with the world ; and hear the voice of the Cruci- 
fied saying, Come, ye blessed children of My Father, re- 
ceive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning 
of the world ! 



THE CAVE OF MACHPELAH. 

EASTER EVEN. 

" In the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in 
the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the 
Hittite for a possession of a burying-place. " — Gen. xlix. 30. 

THUS Israel gave commandment concerning his burial. 
Although he knew that Joseph's power could secure 
interment for him in the most magnificent of Egyptian 
tombs he would nevertheless make his grave in the land 
of promise. The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews tells us that Jacob was one of those " who died in 
faith." He believed the promise made to Abraham and 
to Isaac that Canaan was the inheritance of God's people, 
a land in which they should rule and worship, the land 
of the coming Shiloh, a land which was the type and 
promise of the Promised Land beyond the grave. There- 
fore he charged his sons, " Bury me with my fathers in 
the cave that is in the field of Machpelah; " for " there," 
he continued, " they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; 
there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife ; and there 
I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and of the cave 
that is therein was from the children of Heth. And when 
Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he 
gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the 
ghost, and was gathered unto his people." 

To the ancient commentators it seemed not without a 
poetical and spiritual significance that Jacob's new name 
of Israel, which he won in the wrestling at Peniel, con- 

235 



236 The Bartered Birthright. 

tains " the first letters of the names of the other five " 
who were buried in the cave of Machpelah — Isaac, Sarah, 
Rebekah, Abraham, Leah ; for us, however, his words are 
noteworthy because there is in them a clear expression of 
his confident faith in an immediate meeting with the souls 
of his kindred. " Bury me with my fathers," he says; 
" my dust shall rest with theirs." But he also says, " I am 
to be gathered unto my people," and the historian adds, 
" he yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his 
people." His body was not yet gathered to the bodies 
of his people, so if, at the moment of death, he was 
gathered to them it must have been in the spirit, in the 
Paradise of the faithful ; accordingly the Epistle to the 
Hebrews declares of Jacob and of all those who were 
buried with him in the cave of Machpelah, " These all 
died in faith, not having received the promises, but hav- 
ing seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and 
embraced them." In the assurance of that faith Jacob 
met death with perfect self-possession. ' He gathered 
up his feet into the bed ; " he consented to his departure, 
even as Christ upon the Cross bowed His head in token 
of His consent to the approach of death, and thus will- 
ingly, triumphantly, he was gathered unto his people. 
" How calm and noble that face looked, fixed in the 
marble of death ! The Jacob-look had vanished from it ; 
and it was stamped with the smile with which the royal 
Israel-spirit had moulded it in its outward passage." 

" So, pilgrim, now thy brows are cold, 
We see thee what thou art ; and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below, 
Thy kindred to the great of old." 

During the weeks of Lent we have been trying to learn 
from Jacob how to live ; to-day we may learn from him 



The Cave of Machpelah. 237 

how to die. After " life's long Lent" the world-wearied 
servant of God has " entered into the quiet Easter-eve of 
faith." His history is especially helpful to those who 
find it hard to be good. From first to last his life was a 
fierce and fiery struggle of the flesh against the spirit, and 
of the spirit against the flesh. The note of joy is faint. 
The joylessness of his spiritual life, if somewhat magni- 
fied, is yet traced to its source in Arthur Hugh Clough's 
interpretation of the patriarch's last words to his sons: 



" Ah me ! this eager rivalry of life, 
This cruel conflict for pre-eminence, 
This keen supplanting of the dearest kin, 
Quick seizure and fast unrelaxing hold 
Of vantage-place ; the stony, hard resolve, 
The chase, the competition, and the craft 
Which seems to be the poison of our life, 
And yet is the condition of our life ! 
To have done things on which the eye with shame 
Looks back, the closed hand clutching still the prize ! 
Alas ! What of all these things shall I say ? 
Take me away unto Thy sleep, O God ! 
I thank Thee it is over, yet I think 
It was a work appointed me of Thee. 
How is it ? I have striven all my days 
To do my duty to my house and hearth, 
And to the purpose of my father's race, 
Yet is my heart therewith not satisfied. " 

Yes, the secret of all Jacob's dissatisfaction and dis- 
quietude was his sin and its penalty, the punishment of 
disobedience which ' ' is the other half of sin. ' ' Endowed 
by nature with the richest gifts of intellectual strength 
and firmness of purpose, he was destined to be a master- 
ful, distinguished man. But he was also born with keen 
inclinations to seek self-advancement at any price, and 



238 The Bartered Birthright. 

thus guile in its multitudinous forms became the beset- 
ting sin of his life. It was decreed that he should be the 
birthright heir of the promises of God, but his father's 
wilfulness in disregarding the oracle from on high tempted 
the youth to secure his own by fraud and the bartered 
birthright became henceforth at once the bane and the 
blessing of his life. When God spoke to his soul in the 
Ladder-vision at Bethel he was not disobedient unto 
the heavenly vision ; he vowed his vow, consecrated him- 
self to the service of God, and all that follows is the rec- 
ord of his efforts to keep that vow. And the Spirit of God 
helped him in his struggle, by encouragement, by chas- 
tisement, and never forsook him. There can be few of 
us who have had to meet greater hindrances in our efforts 
to be true to God and to the highest ideals of mankind. 
But in the end he triumphed over all the foes of his soul. 
If we are steadfast, we also may share his victory. 

They " buried him in the cave of the field of Mach- 
pelah." On Easter Even our thoughts turn to another 
cave where " they laid Jesus." In that cavern tomb, 
which was also in the land of Canaan, the worn and 
lacerated body of the Lord reposed in peace through the 
long Jewish Sabbath Day. Our Saviour's body was in 
the cave; His soul was gathered to His people. He was 
with His people, all the departed, who awaited the resur- 
rection and the final judgment. He promised to meet 
the penitent thief this day in Paradise. And Paradise is 
not Heaven, for on Easter morning He said to the Mag- 
dalene, " Touch me not ! I have not yet ascended to My 
Father." He did not go to Heaven, the abode of the 
Father, until He assumed His risen body. On Easter 
Even, therefore, we see the meaning of the words of the 
Creed, " He descended into Hell," into the abode of the 



The Cave of Machpelah. 239 

departed, where all souls wait the resurrection and the 
judgment of the last day. 

Can we doubt that on the first Easter Even Jacob saw 
Christ, and received the full answer to his dying prayer, 
I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord! " 
Jacob's soul was in Paradise; on earth his body was 
being prepared for Machpelah. " And Joseph com- 
manded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: 
and the physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days 
were fulfilled for him ; for so are fulfilled the days of 
those which are embalmed. . . . And Joseph went 
up to bury his father: and with him went up all the serv- 
ants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the 
elders of the land of Egypt. And all the house of 
Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house: only 
their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they 
left in the land of Goshen. And there went up with 
him both chariots and horsemen : and it was a very great 
company. And they came to the threshing-floor of 
Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned 
with a great and very sore lamentation : and he made a 
mourning for his father seven days. And when the in- 
habitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning 
in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourn- 
ing to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was 
called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond Jordan. And his 
sons did unto him according as he commanded them : 
For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and 
buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which 
Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a 
buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre. " 
Thus the mortal remains of the Prince of God were laid 
to rest; " and in all probability they are there, in a state 



240 The Bartered Birthright. 

of perfect preservation, unto this day. Many a storm has 
swept over them — Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian, 
Grecian, Roman, Saracenic, and Mohammedan. But 
nought has disturbed their quiet rest; and there " they 
await the second advent of the Crucified and Risen Lord. 
" For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with 
a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the 
trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall rise first : 
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up 
together with them in the clouds; to meet the Lord in 
the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Where- 
fore comfort one another with these words." 

THE END. 



*eb-7 1901 f/tft) 






JAN 26 1901 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 243 633 4 



Hum 



nh 



I 



IIIHIlHI 



I 

iiiiiiiiiiiiii 



